Extra Packages for Enterprise Linux (EPEL)

EPEL

Welcome to the home of the EPEL Special Interest Group.

The goal of EPEL is to make high quality Fedora packages available for RHEL and compatible derivatives.

Quickstart

We offer release packages containing our repository configuration files and public package signing keys. Use the version that corresponds to the major version of your operating system.

If you are using CentOS Stream, we also recommend installing the corresponding epel-next-release package.

For convenience some distributions include these release packages in their default repositories, allowing you to install them by name without the full URL.

Some EPEL packages depend on packages from repositories that are not enabled by default. Take note of the additional repositories being enabled in the following instructions.

EL9

CentOS Stream 9

dnf config-manager --set-enabled crb
dnf install epel-release epel-next-release

RHEL 9

subscription-manager repos --enable codeready-builder-for-rhel-9-$(arch)-rpms
dnf install https://dl.fedoraproject.org/pub/epel/epel-release-latest-9.noarch.rpm

AlmaLinux 9, Rocky Linux 9

dnf config-manager --set-enabled crb
dnf install epel-release

EL8

CentOS Stream 8

dnf config-manager --set-enabled powertools
dnf install epel-release epel-next-release

RHEL 8

subscription-manager repos --enable codeready-builder-for-rhel-8-$(arch)-rpms
dnf install https://dl.fedoraproject.org/pub/epel/epel-release-latest-8.noarch.rpm

AlmaLinux 8, Rocky Linux 8

dnf config-manager --set-enabled powertools
dnf install epel-release

EL7

RHEL 7

subscription-manager repos --enable rhel-*-optional-rpms \
                           --enable rhel-*-extras-rpms \
                           --enable rhel-ha-for-rhel-*-server-rpms
yum install https://dl.fedoraproject.org/pub/epel/epel-release-latest-7.noarch.rpm

CentOS 7

yum install epel-release

What is Extra Packages for Enterprise Linux (or 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, Scientific Linux (SL), Oracle Linux (OL), AlmaLinux (AL) and Rocky Linux (RL).

EPEL packages are usually based on their Fedora counterparts and should not conflict with or replace packages in the base Enterprise Linux distributions. EPEL uses much of the same infrastructure as Fedora, including buildsystem, Bugzilla instance, updates manager, mirror manager and more.

Learn more about EPEL in the following pages:

What is EPEL-Next?

EPEL packages are built against RHEL. EPEL Next packages are built against CentOS Stream.

EPEL-Next is not a complete rebuild of all the EPEL packages, but only those packages that need to be rebuilt to install on CentOS Stream. The EPEL-Next repo is meant to be layered on top of the regular EPEL repository.

Learn more about EPEL-Next on the following page:

What packages and versions are available in EPEL?

Since EPEL is part of the Fedora project, you can search the available packages in the Fedora Packages web app. This provides an overview of available versions across various EPEL branches. If you find a package that is not yet available in the EPEL branch you would like it to be, please follow this guide to request it.

Alternately, you can browse the repo files directly:

You can also browse these same directories on any of our mirrors.

END OF LIFE RELEASES

THESE ARE NO LONGER SUPPORTED

Due to major security changes in SSL in the last 10 years, older releases may not be able to directly point to these releases. As of 2021-01-22, EPEL-5 and 4 systems do not have the newer TLS 1.2 algorithms that Internet servers are required to use for security reasons. The best method for working with these is to have a newer system mirror the entire archive and then for your systems to point to that mirror.

How can I use these extra packages?

EPEL has an 'epel-release' package that includes GPG keys for package signing and repository information. Installing this package for your Enterprise Linux version should allow you to use normal tools such as yum to install packages and their dependencies. By default the stable EPEL repo is enabled, there is also a 'epel-testing' repository that contains packages that are not yet deemed stable.

  • NOTE for RHN users: You need to also enable the 'optional' repository to use EPEL packages as they depend on packages in that repository. This can be done by enabling the RHEL optional subchannel for RHN-Classic. For certificate-based subscriptions see Red Hat Subscription Management Guide.

  • NOTE for RHEL 7 users with certificate subscriptions: EPEL 7 packages assume that the 'optional' repository (rhel-7-server-optional-rpms for servers) and the 'extras' repository (rhel-7-server-extras-rpms for servers) are enabled. You can do this with:

subscription-manager repos --enable rhel-7-server-optional-rpms --enable rhel-7-server-extras-rpms

  • NOTE for RHEL 8 users with certificate subscriptions: EPEL packages assume that the 'codeready-builder' repository is enabled. You can do this with:

subscription-manager repos --enable "codeready-builder-for-rhel-8-$(arch)-rpms"

  • NOTE for CentOS 8 and CentOS Stream 8 users: EPEL packages assume that the 'powertools' repository is enabled. You can do this with:

dnf config-manager --set-enabled powertools

  • NOTE for CentOS users: You can install EPEL by running yum install epel-release. The package is included in the CentOS Extras repository, enabled by default.

You can verify these packages and their keys from the Fedora project’s keys page: https://fedoraproject.org/keys

Can I rely on these packages?

The EPEL project strives to provide packages with both high quality and stability. However, EPEL is maintained by a community of people who generally volunteer their time and no commercial support is provided. It is the nature of such a project that packages will come and go from the EPEL repositories over the course of a single release. In addition, it is possible that occasionally an incompatible update will be released such that administrator action is required. By policy these are announced in advance in order to give administrators time to test and provide suggestions.

It is strongly recommended that if you make use of EPEL, and especially if you rely upon it, that you subscribe to the epel-announce list. Traffic on this list is kept to a minimum needed to notify administrators of important updates.

History and background of the project

The EPEL project was born when Fedora maintainers realized that the same infrastructure that builds and maintains packages for Fedora would be great to also maintain add on packages for Enterprise Linux. Much of the early need was driven by what Fedora infrastructure needed on the RHEL machines that built and maintained Fedora. From there things have grown to a large collection of varied packages. See our history and Philosophy page for more information.

How can I contribute?

EPEL is always looking for interested folks to help out. We always need package maintainers, QA/testers, bug triagers and documentation writers. Please see our Joining EPEL page for more information on how to join EPEL.

Communicating with EPEL

There are many ways to communicate with EPEL and its members:

  • The EPEL Steering Committee meets on Wednesday every week in the Fedora Meeting 1 Matrix channel. The time is not tied to U.S. daylight savings time, so it is at 18:00 UTC regardless of the time of year. Please check the time on the epel calendar; sometimes it can change or a meeting can be skipped. Feel free to join us! Logs of past meetings can be viewed in meetbot.

  • The EPEL Steering Committee has monthly office hours for the EPEL project.