[CentOS] EL7 mirror: "There is no installed groups file."

Sat Jan 11 05:35:00 UTC 2014
Ted Miller <tedlists at sbcglobal.net>

On 01/08/2014 07:00 PM, Mark LaPierre wrote:
> On 01/07/2014 08:27 PM, Warren Young wrote:
>> I installed the RHEL 7 beta here to test while waiting for CentOS 7 to
>> arrive.  On noticing that yum didn't work, I decided to set up a local
>> mirror.  I rsync'd
>>
>>     ftp://ftp.redhat.com/pub/redhat/rhel/beta/7/x86_64/os/Packages/
>>
>> to a local web server here, then regenerated the repodata directory with
>> createrepo.
>>
>> Now yum works fine, for the most part.  "yum search foo" pulls up a
>> plausible list of packages, "yum install bar" chases dependencies as
>> expected, etc.
>>
>> Unfortunately, "yum groupinstall" isn't working, which means I have no
>> easy way to install Gnome on my minimal EL7 installation.  Apparently I
>> need some kind of "groups file" to feed to createrepo --groupfile, but I
>> don't know where to get one, or how to construct one.  I've dug around
>> on ftp.redhat.com and can't find anything that looks plausible.
>>
>> I've tried manually installing packages to build up this GNOME desktop,
>> but despite installing dozens of things, startx still doesn't give me
>> something usable.
>>
>> I know I could get a GNOME desktop by reinstalling the OS, but that
>> would wipe out a lot of the local work I've done on this VM so far.
>>
>> The only reason I need X in the first place is that
>> system-config-printer no longer runs in text mode.
>>
>> (I'm trying to set up a CUPS server.  So yeah, X11 is a prerequisite for
>> installing a printer now.  Lovely.)
>
> How about using http://localhost:631 with lynx or some other such text
> based browser.

Two suggestions:

1. Make the last suggestion easier -- browse to port 631 from another 
computer and use the browser interface to set up CUPS.  (You may have to 
set a permission in a CUPS setup file to browse from another computer--been 
a while since i did this.)

2. "ssh -X root@<FQDN> system-config-printer" from an X-windows terminal 
program and your printer configuration will pop up in a window on the other 
computer.  I use that for all kinds of things.  You only need a couple of 
files {something about xauth... and font file(s)} and you can do GUI-based 
configuration on a headless server.  [Works great for headless KVM hosts.]

Ted Miller