Fedora YUM

Note

The standalone yum project is archived; on modern RHEL and Fedora the yum command is a maintained compatibility alias for dnf.

ID

yum

Home page

http://yum.baseurl.org

Upstream stars

⭐ 135

Last commit

2021-04-02

Version requirement

>= 4

Platforms

🅱️ BSD · 🐧 Linux · ⨂ Unix

Operations

installed · outdated · orphans · search · install · upgrade · upgrade_all · remove · sync · cleanup · doctor

purl types

pkg:rpm · pkg:yum

CLI name

yum

Every call

yum --color=never --quiet <command>

Issues and PRs

📦 manager: rpm-based

Source

meta_package_manager/managers/dnf.py

YUM, the package manager DNF superseded.

On current Fedora and RHEL the yum binary is a wrapper around dnf. mpm drives it exactly as DNF, only the binary name differs.

What mpm adds to yum

Through mpm, yum gains --exact and --extended search, to narrow to exact names or match descriptions.

Bigger still, mpm reaches across every manager at once: mpm installed and mpm outdated cover yum alongside dnf, dnf5, zypper and any other manager you run in one table, mpm upgrade --all updates them together, and mpm sbom exports the whole machine as one bill of materials.

Every mpm command also gains --dry-run and --plan previews, cross-scheme version comparison and purl identifiers. See manager augmentations for how each one is built.

Your yum commands, in mpm

You already know yum: each operation maps one-to-one onto mpm, in an interface shared by every manager.

To…	With yum	With mpm
List what’s installed	dnf repoquery --userinstalled --qf <format>	mpm --yum installed
List outdated packages	dnf repoquery --installed --qf <format>	mpm --yum outdated
Search for a package	dnf4 search usd	mpm --yum search usd
Install a package	sudo dnf --assumeyes install pip	mpm install pkg:yum/pip
Upgrade one package	sudo dnf --assumeyes upgrade pip	mpm --yum upgrade pip
Upgrade everything	sudo dnf --assumeyes upgrade	mpm --yum upgrade --all
Remove a package	sudo dnf --assumeyes remove pip	mpm remove pkg:yum/pip
List orphaned dependencies	dnf repoquery --unneeded	mpm --yum orphans
Clear caches	sudo dnf clean all	mpm --yum cleanup --cache
Run health checks	dnf check	mpm --yum doctor

Prefix any command above with --dry-run to simulate the underlying manager calls without touching the system: the safe way to watch what mpm would do before trusting it.

Operations

Operation	Supported	Notes
installed	✓
outdated	✓
orphans	✓
search	✓	exact and extended search backfilled by mpm
install	✓
upgrade	✓
upgrade_all	✓
remove	✓	--orphans also drops the package’s orphaned dependencies
sync	✓
cleanup	✓	--orphans runs the system-wide orphan sweep
doctor	✓

Selecting and configuring yum

Deselect yum for a single run with --no-yum, or persist the choice in your configuration:

[mpm]
yum = false

The arguments and environment variables listed in the box atop this page are forced on every yum call, so runs stay quiet, non-interactive and reproducible: the defaults you would set in CI anyway.

Keep it enabled but tune how mpm drives it with a per-manager override:

[mpm.overrides.yum]
timeout = 900

mpm config-template yum prints every overridable attribute as a ready-to-paste block.

Recipes

A few jobs you would otherwise script around yum, one mpm command each:

• Snapshot and clone a machine: mpm --yum dump yum.toml, then mpm restore yum.toml on the next one.

• Export a compliance SBOM: mpm --yum sbom (CycloneDX by default, --spdx for SPDX).

• Gate CI on health: mpm --yum doctor relays Fedora YUM’s own diagnosis and exits non-zero on trouble.

Privilege escalation

System-wide manager: mpm wraps its privileged operations in sudo out of the box. Instead of letting the tool prompt mid-run, mpm primes the credential cache up-front, with a single branded password prompt at most. Turn escalation off for rootless setups with --no-sudo or the per-manager sudo override.

See privilege escalation for the full policy.

Concurrency

mpm never runs yum at the same time as dnf, dnf5, urpmi or zypper: they all reach the RPM database, and a second writer waits on its lock for as long as the first one holds it, rather than failing. Each mutating operation waits for the previous one, even with a higher --jobs, while managers outside this group keep running in parallel.

Only mutations are held back. The read-only queries (installed, outdated, search) take no backend lock and stay fully concurrent.

Cooldown

State of Fedora YUM’s release-age gating, from the cooldown support table:

Status: ➖ N/A (deprecated alias for dnf on RHEL-family)

A cooldown only pays off where a compromised release can be withdrawn while the clock runs, and can only be emulated where the registry dates its releases. From the retraction table:

• Registry: Distro binary archives (pkg:deb, pkg:rpm, pkg:alpm, pkg:apk)

• Retraction: Index revert: removal is an archive operation and the mirror is rebuilt without the package. Debian, for one, requires filing an RM: bug against ftp.debian.org (developers-reference)

• Publish date: ❌ the version string is the distro maintainer’s build, carrying no upstream publication date

With --cooldown set, mpm skips this manager’s install and upgrade operations rather than run them unguarded (fail-closed); --cooldown best-effort opts back in.

Version probe

The version is extracted from the output of yum --version with the first of these regular expressions to match:

r"dnf5\s+version\s+(?P<version>\S+)"
r"(?P<version>\S+)"

Upstream project

Metrics	rpm-software-management/yum
Activity
Popularity
Metadata

Changelog

• 8.0.0.dev0 (unreleased)

  • Fix version detection against dnf5, whose banner was read as the version dnf5, dropping every RPM front-end from the pool on Fedora 41 and later.

  • Fix search on dnf5, which returned no results at all, and keep whole package descriptions instead of their first word.

  • Fix outdated, which reported the upgrade candidate’s own version as the installed one, and now names the epoch and release both sides differ by.

• 7.4.0 (2026-07-25)

  • Plain cleanup no longer removes orphaned packages: their native sweeps moved behind cleanup --orphans. This also stops emerge’s cleanup from triggering its pre-depclean world upgrade unless --orphans is given.

  • remove no longer cascades to orphaned dependencies by default: a plain removal keeps them. Use the new remove --orphans to restore the previous behavior.

• 6.2.0 (2026-03-25)

  • Add --quiet option to all invocations to reduce log verbosity.

• 5.19.0 (2024-11-14)

  • Implement remove operation.

  • Use query template instead of regex parsing to retrieve package data.

• 5.0.0 (2022-04-25)

  • Add dedicated yum package manager. Refs #415.

• 4.12.0 (2022-04-04)

  • Allow yum to act as dnf. Closes #415.