How to disable repository from updates in Linux CentOS

Posted on May 23, 2022

I’m searching for a credible way to disable repositories and stop them from updating my packages. I’ve had some issue and found some ways on the internet but wanted to hear an opinion what’s best

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KFSys

May 23, 2022

Accepted Answer

Hello,

There are a couple of ways to do so, depending on what you want to achieve.

If you now the exact repository you want to deny you can simply run:

yum --disablerepo=Repo-Name

If you are not sure about the repo’s name, you can run:

yum repolist

From there get the repo id.

There are other ways but is is the quickest I believe.

KFSys

May 25, 2022

Hi @brendros,

Additionally, if you want to disable only a specific package from being updated, you can open and edit the yum.conf file, which is located in /etc/yum.conf or in /etc/yum/yum.conf. In the file if there isn’t a line exclude add one that way:

exclude=php*

The above will disable all PHP packages from being updated.

KFSys

August 28, 2023

If you’re using AlmaLinux 9, which is an RHEL fork like CentOS, the package manager in use is dnf (which replaced yum in recent RHEL-based distributions).

To disable a repository (or repositories) and stop them from updating your packages, you can follow these steps:

List Available Repositories

sudo dnf repolist

Disable a Repository

To disable a specific repository, you can use the dnf config-manager tool. If you don’t have it installed, install the dnf-plugins-core package:

sudo dnf install dnf-plugins-core

Now, to disable a repository, for instance epel, you would do:

sudo dnf config-manager --set-disabled epel

Replace epel with the name of the repository you wish to disable.

Temporary Disable During a Transaction

If you just want to temporarily exclude a repository during a specific dnf transaction, you can use the --disablerepo option. For example:

sudo dnf install some-package --disablerepo=epel

Permanent Disable via Configuration Files

Repositories have their configuration files located in /etc/yum.repos.d/. To disable a repository, you can edit its respective configuration file and set enabled=0.

For example, to disable the epel repository: