Where is the best location for finding information on /yum?

Question

So I'm trying install php-mcrypt on one server and git-core on another server. It seems like locating packages is where I'm falling short. (just learning server administration)

I'm very ignorant of repositories and how they play into the whole installation bit. I know that I need to add additional repositories, but that all confuses me and I never know if I did it right, or if I need to update after... I'm just confused.

Can you tell me how to manage my yum repositories? what commands to use and where I should find repositories. how I can search all of the repositories for a certain package. Just the basic yum repositories 101.

Answer 1

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 Deployment Guide, Chapter 5 is about yum. Reading it will answer your questions about "what commands to use". Before doing that, you may want to take a minute and make sure you understand the concept of package management.

For software that isn't already included in the repository provided by your linux distribution, a popular repository is EPEL.

Extra Packages for Enterprise Linux (or EPEL) is a Fedora Special Interest Group that creates, maintains, and manages a high quality set of additional packages for Enterprise Linux, including, but not limited to, Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), CentOS and Scientific Linux (SL).

If you use CentOS, several repositories are enabled by default. You must choose between using the CentOS Extras repository or using EPEL, since they have overlapping packages.

Answer 2

1. I found this information about yum and RPM handling as well.
2. Handling software repositories