External Repository Server Bootstrap

Bootstrapping a new External Repo Koji build environment

These are the steps involved in pointing a new Koji server at external repositories so that it can be used for building. This assumes that the Koji hub is up, appropriate authentication methods have been configured, the Koji repo administration daemon (kojira) is properly configured and running, and at least one Koji builder (kojid) is properly configured and running. All koji cli commands assume that the user is a Koji admin. If you need help with these tasks, see the Server How To.

• Create a new tag.

  $ koji add-tag dist-foo
  

• Create a build tag with the desired arches, and the previously created tag as a parent.

  $ koji add-tag --parent dist-foo --arches "i386 x86_64 ppc ppc64" dist-foo-build
  

• Add an external repository to your build tag. Koji substitutes $arch for the arches in your build tag. The $ needs to be escaped for the shell to send it though without interpreting it. See below for some additional examples of external repo URLs.

  $ koji add-external-repo -t dist-foo-build dist-foo-external-repo http://repo-server.example.com/path/to/repo/for/foo/\$arch/
  

  Note

  If you are adding multiple external repos, koji assigns a priority to each repo in FIFO order. This may cause updated packages to not be visible if a repo with older packages is ranked at a higher priority (lower numeric value). Use the -p flag to set specific repo priorities.

  Note

  This uses $arch NOT $basearch

  Koji behaves differently to the external repository based on which merge mode is set for that. Merge modes can be set via -m option and are as follows:

  koji

  Basic mode - koji expects, that that repo is complete and doesn’t contain mixed content. It means that only rpms from one SRPM can be present in repo for given package.

  It runs mergerepos_c --koji Repositories generated via dist-repo command (and all other repositories coming from koji` has these properties.

  bare

  It runs mergerepos_c --pkgorigins --all. It includes all rpms with same package name and architecture even if version or release is different. This one is needed for modular repos. createrepo_c 0.14+ compiled with libmodule support needs to be installed on the builder. Nevertheless, only the first rpm with identical NEVRA is accepted.

  simple

  It runs mergerepos_c --mode simple - we’re least restrivtive with this type of repo. Even packages with identical NEVRA are accepted in such case. Simple mode is in createrepo_c suite from version 0.13. Reasons to use this compared to bare mode is a) you have older createrepo_c, b) you really want to have all this identical NEVRAs in the repo.

• Create a build target that includes the tags you’ve already created.

  $ koji add-target dist-foo dist-foo-build
  

  At this point you can verify that your external repository is set with the “taginfo” command. You should see it listed under “External repos”. Here is an example with several CentOS external repos:

  $ koji taginfo dist-foo-build
    Tag: dist-foo-build [740]
    Arches: x86_64
    Groups: build, srpm-build
    Tag options:
    This tag is a buildroot for one or more targets
    Current repo: repo#55077: 2017-11-29 03:34:18.847127
    Targets that build from this tag:
      dist-foo
    External repos:
        2 centos7-cr (http://mirror.centos.org/centos/7/cr/$arch/)
        3 centos7-extras (http://mirror.centos.org/centos/7/extras/$arch/)
        5 centos7-updates (http://mirror.centos.org/centos/7/updates/$arch/)
       10 centos7-os (http://mirror.centos.org/centos/7/os/$arch/)
  

• Create a ‘’build’’ and ‘’srpm-build’’ group associated with your build tag.

  $ koji add-group dist-foo-build build
  $ koji add-group dist-foo-build srpm-build
  

• Populate the build and srpm-build group with packages that will be installed into the minimal buildroot. You can find out what the is in the current groups for Fedora by running koji list-groups dist-f9-build against the Fedora Koji instance. This is probably a good starting point for your minimal buildroot and srpm creation buildroot. If you are rebuilding Fedora packages, it is recommended that you add all packages listed in the Fedora Koji instance.

  $ koji add-group-pkg dist-foo-build build <pkg1> <pkg2> .....
  

• Add packages that you intend to build to your tag.

  $ koji add-pkg --owner <kojiuser> dist-foo <pkg1> <pkg2> .....
  

• Wait for the repo to regenerate, and you should now be able to run a build successfully.

Regenerating your repo

koji doesn’t monitor external repositories for changes by default. Administrators can enable such bejaviour with setting check_external_repos = true in kojira.conf (for details see Koji Utilities). If it is not enabled new repositories will be generated when packages you build land in a tag that populates the buildroot or you manually regenerate the repository. you should be sure to regularly regenerate the repositories manually to pick up updates.

$ koji regen-repo dist-foo-build

Examples of urls to use for external Repositories

all these examples use mirrors.kernel.org please find the closest mirror to yourself. Note that the Fedora minimal buildroots download ~100Mb then build dependencies on top. these are downloaded each build you can save a lot of network bandwidth by using a local mirror or running through a caching proxy.

NOTE: this uses $arch NOT $basearch

Fedora 10

https://mirrors.kernel.org/fedora/releases/10/Everything/\$arch/os/
https://mirrors.kernel.org/fedora/updates/10/\$arch/

CentOS 5 and EPEL

https://mirrors.kernel.org/centos/5/os/\$arch/
https://mirrors.kernel.org/centos/5/updates/\$arch/
https://mirrors.kernel.org/fedora-epel/5/\$arch/

Example tags and targets

In the simplest setup, where you just want to build against what is available in the external repositories, you may want to go with a simple layout of dist-f**X*-build* tags inheriting one another, and dist-f**X*-updates* tags and targets that inherit the dist-f**X*-build* tag and have external repos attached to them. This way, a dist-f**Y*-build* or dist-f**Y*-updates* tag will not automatically inherit the external repos of your dist-f**X** tags.

Tags

dist-f10-updates               - This is where the external repos for f10 release and f10 updates are attached
 `- dist-f10-build             - This is the f10 build target with the 'build' and 'srpm-build' group inherited from dist-f9-build,
     |                           so that your buildroot gets populated but you do not have to maintain these groups for each
     |                           separate release.
     `- dist-f9-build          - etc.
         `- dist-f8-build      - etc.

Targets

Each dist-f**X*-build* tag has a dist-f**X*-updates* child tag, and each dist-f**X*-updates* tag has a corresponding dist-f**X*-updates-candidate* build target.