I have Sun VirtualBox installed on my XP system and have a few different guest OSes I am trying out. I have CentOS 5.2 installed and updated it with no problem with yum (and the gui for it). I got a trial of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 5.2 knowing that I wouldn't be able to update it through the Red Hat Network (RHN) but I wanted to see how much difference there was between RHEL and CentOS (I want to get my RHCE some time in the future).

I tried to update RHEL 5.2 by just downloading the individual RPMs so that I could install the Guest addons for VirtualBox- it needs gcc, kernel-devel, and kernel-headers I believe in order to install. Trying the manual RPM route was a mess as all the dependencies started yelling at me so I figure I would try adding the CentOS yum repository to my RHEL box. I emailed myself the /etc/yum.repos.d/CentOS-Base.repo and dropped it into the RHEL's /etc/yum.repos.d/ directory. When I try to run the update I get the error:
I am pretty sure the problem is that in the CentOS repo it has variables for certain parts of the update directory, example:
mirrorlist=http://mirrorlist.centos.org/?release=$releasever&arch=$basearch&repo=os

But my CentOS repo on the RHEL has this now:
mirrorlist=http://mirrorlist.centos.org/?release=5Server@arch=i386&repo=os

I guess what I need to know is what static variable, er constant, should I use for $releasever and basearch?

Plus, if I do put in the "correct" releasever and basearch will the updates work? AFAIK CentOS 5.2 and RHEL 5.2 are supposed to be binary compatible, right?

Thanks a million!

It should work, but will no longer be true redhat, so you may as well start with CentOS.

I am not so worried about it being a "true redhat" (although I agree that this will make it less "true"). This is just an exercise that I am probably spending too much time on just because I want to figure it out.

Wow, just noticed that I registered way back in Jan 2004 and this is my third post!

I've seen it recommended many times for people who don't have subscriptions, and can't see why it wouldn't work, but haven't done it myself.

once again you will try to /etc/yum.repos.d/directory. via http or ftp as u like client side or server side.
surely it will updated