Installing Packages to a Linux Server Without Internet Access

Posted by Riku on Thursday, May 28. 2020

Occasionally you can find a situation where you have a network admin server in a restricted customer environment or in some other offline environment. I came accross to this a while ago and I followed this procedure to install some essential network tools. Server in my case was RedHat 7.5, but process is similar to any distribution.

To begin with, I built an identical server to my own VM environment - if you need a RedHat server with licenses, check their Developer portal

Only requirement is that you are able to transfer files between your online server and your offline server - this may be tricky and in very restricted environments, might need so physical disk too. In my case I was luckily able to transfer the files through a Citrix RDP session.

In the code examples I have two servers: source is my online VM and target is the offline server.

In my case I needed to run some Python36 scripts, so I can find the packages I'm looking for using yum search

[root@source ~]# yum search python36

Loaded plugins: product-id, search-disabled-repos, subscription-manager

=======================================================================

N/S matched: python36 

=======================================================================

rh-python36.x86_64 : Package that installs rh-python36

rh-python36-runtime.x86_64 : Package that handles rh-python36 Software Collection.

rh-python36-scldevel.x86_64 : Package shipping development files for rh-python36

rh-python36-PyYAML.x86_64 : YAML parser and emitter for Python

rh-python36-babel.noarch : Tools for internationalizing Python applications

rh-python36-mod_wsgi.x86_64 : A WSGI interface for Python web applications in Apache

rh-python36-numpy.x86_64 : A fast multidimensional array facility for Python

rh-python36-numpy-f2py.x86_64 : f2py for numpy

rh-python36-python.x86_64 : Version 3 of the Python programming language aka Python 3000

rh-python36-python-PyMySQL.noarch : Pure-Python MySQL client library

rh-python36-python-babel.noarch : Library for internationalizing Python applications

rh-python36-python-bson.x86_64 : Python bson library

rh-python36-python-coverage.x86_64 : Code coverage testing module for Python

rh-python36-python-debug.x86_64 : Debug version of the Python 3 runtime

rh-python36-python-devel.x86_64 : Libraries and header files needed for Python 3 development

rh-python36-python-docutils.noarch : System for processing plaintext documentation

rh-python36-python-jinja2.noarch : General purpose template engine

rh-python36-python-libs.x86_64 : Python 3 runtime libraries

rh-python36-python-markupsafe.x86_64 : Implements a XML/HTML/XHTML Markup safe string for Python

rh-python36-python-nose.noarch : Discovery-based unittest extension for Python

rh-python36-python-nose-docs.noarch : Nose Documentation

rh-python36-python-pip.noarch : A tool for installing and managing Python packages

rh-python36-python-psycopg2.x86_64 : A PostgreSQL database adapter for Python

rh-python36-python-psycopg2-doc.x86_64 : Documentation for psycopg python PostgreSQL database adapter

rh-python36-python-pygments.noarch : Syntax highlighting engine written in Python

rh-python36-python-pymongo.x86_64 : Python driver for MongoDB

rh-python36-python-pymongo-doc.x86_64 : Documentation for python-pymongo

rh-python36-python-pymongo-gridfs.x86_64 : Python GridFS driver for MongoDB

rh-python36-python-setuptools.noarch : Easily build and distribute Python packages

rh-python36-python-simplejson.x86_64 : Simple, fast, extensible JSON encoder/decoder for Python

rh-python36-python-six.noarch : Python 2 and 3 compatibility utilities

rh-python36-python-sphinx.noarch : Python documentation generator

rh-python36-python-sphinx-doc.noarch : Documentation for python-sphinx

rh-python36-python-sqlalchemy.x86_64 : Modular and flexible ORM library for python

rh-python36-python-test.x86_64 : The test modules from the main python 3 package

rh-python36-python-tkinter.x86_64 : A GUI toolkit for Python 3

rh-python36-python-tools.x86_64 : A collection of tools included with Python 3

rh-python36-python-virtualenv.noarch : Tool to create isolated Python environments

rh-python36-python-wheel.noarch : A built-package format for Python

rh-python36-scipy.x86_64 : Scipy: Scientific Tools for Python

  Name and summary matches only, use "search all" for everything.

Based on the output, I would need the base Python36 file and pip for now:

rh-python36.x86_64

rh-python36-python-pip.noarch

Process can be done in following steps

1) Copy RPM DB from the destination server, so you can download all necessary packages required for that. Use tar to pack it.

[root@target ~]# tar cjf rpm_db.tar.bz2 /var/lib/rpm

2) Move rpm_db.tar.bz2 to your online server, VM on my laptop in my case. After that, create a temp directory and extract RPM DB there.

[root@source ~]# mkdir /tmp/rpm_db/

[root@source ~]# tar xf /tmp/rpm_db.tar.bz2 -C /tmp/rpm_db/

3) Download necessary packages with Yum using --downloadonly option, so that packages will be only downloaded and not installed

[root@source ~]# yum install rh-python36.x86_64 rh-python36-python-pip.noarch --downloadonly --downloaddir /tmp/rpm_db --installroot=/tmp/rpm_db/

There are several dependencies required for target server and yum nicely downloads them all.

Dependencies Resolved

=======================================================================

 Package                                               Arch                           Version                                  Repository                                        Size

=======================================================================

Installing:

 rh-python36                                           x86_64                         2.0-1.el7                                rhel-server-rhscl-7-rpms                         3.3 k

 rh-python36-python-pip                                noarch                         9.0.1-2.el7                              rhel-server-rhscl-7-rpms                         1.7 M

Installing for dependencies:

 dwz                                                   x86_64                         0.11-3.el7                               rhel-7-server-rpms                                99 k

 iso-codes                                             noarch                         3.46-2.el7                               rhel-7-server-rpms                               2.7 M

 perl-srpm-macros                                      noarch                         1-8.el7                                  rhel-7-server-rpms                               4.7 k

 python-srpm-macros                                    noarch                         3-32.el7                                 rhel-7-server-rpms                               8.5 k

 redhat-rpm-config                                     noarch                         9.1.0-88.el7                             rhel-7-server-rpms                                81 k

 rh-python36-python                                    x86_64                         3.6.9-2.el7                              rhel-server-rhscl-7-rpms                          56 k

 rh-python36-python-devel                              x86_64                         3.6.9-2.el7                              rhel-server-rhscl-7-rpms                         842 k

 rh-python36-python-libs                               x86_64                         3.6.9-2.el7                              rhel-server-rhscl-7-rpms                         7.6 M

 rh-python36-python-setuptools                         noarch                         36.5.0-1.el7                             rhel-server-rhscl-7-rpms                         567 k

 rh-python36-python-virtualenv                         noarch                         15.1.0-2.el7                             rhel-server-rhscl-7-rpms                         1.8 M

 rh-python36-runtime                                   x86_64                         2.0-1.el7                                rhel-server-rhscl-7-rpms                         1.1 M

 scl-utils                                             x86_64                         20130529-19.el7                          rhel-7-server-rpms                                24 k

 scl-utils-build                                       x86_64                         20130529-19.el7                          rhel-server-rhscl-7-rpms                          18 k

4) Use tar to pack the installation packages - my target server didn't have bzip2 installed, so I just used tar.

[root@source ~]# ls /tmp/rpm_db/

dwz-0.11-3.el7.x86_64.rpm                  rh-python36-2.0-1.el7.x86_64.rpm                       rh-python36-python-virtualenv-15.1.0-2.el7.noarch.rpm

etc                                        rh-python36-python-3.6.9-2.el7.x86_64.rpm              rh-python36-runtime-2.0-1.el7.x86_64.rpm

iso-codes-3.46-2.el7.noarch.rpm            rh-python36-python-devel-3.6.9-2.el7.x86_64.rpm        scl-utils-20130529-19.el7.x86_64.rpm

perl-srpm-macros-1-8.el7.noarch.rpm        rh-python36-python-libs-3.6.9-2.el7.x86_64.rpm         scl-utils-build-20130529-19.el7.x86_64.rpm

python-srpm-macros-3-32.el7.noarch.rpm     rh-python36-python-pip-9.0.1-2.el7.noarch.rpm          var

redhat-rpm-config-9.1.0-88.el7.noarch.rpm  rh-python36-python-setuptools-36.5.0-1.el7.noarch.rpm

[root@source ~]# tar cvf rpm-updates.tar /tmp/rpm_db/*.rpm

5) Move the files to your target server, unpack them and use yum localinstall to install them!

[root@target ~]# mkdir /tmp/rpms

[root@target ~]# tar xf /tmp/rpm-updates.tar -C /tmp/rpms



[root@target ~]# yum localinstall /tmp/rpms/*.rpm

Remember to remove unnecessary packages from the target production server

[root@target ~]# rm -f /tmp/rpms/*.rpm

[root@target ~]# rmdir /tmp/rmps

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