Bug 1969500 - EPEL 8 should not contain the $releasever variable which fails when the "releasever" is set to anything other than 8
Summary: EPEL 8 should not contain the $releasever variable which fails when the "rele...
Keywords:
Status: CLOSED ERRATA
Alias: None
Product: Fedora EPEL
Classification: Fedora
Component: epel-release
Version: epel8
Hardware: All
OS: All
urgent
urgent
Target Milestone: ---
Assignee: Kevin Fenzi
QA Contact: Fedora Extras Quality Assurance
URL:
Whiteboard:
Depends On:
Blocks:
TreeView+ depends on / blocked
 
Reported: 2021-06-08 14:15 UTC by jcastran
Modified: 2022-03-26 18:19 UTC (History)
12 users (show)

Fixed In Version: epel-release-8-15.el8
Doc Type: If docs needed, set a value
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Clone Of:
Environment:
Last Closed: 2022-03-22 23:46:55 UTC
Type: Bug
Embargoed:


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System ID Private Priority Status Summary Last Updated
Red Hat Knowledge Base (Solution) 6106221 0 None None None 2021-06-08 14:30:29 UTC

Description jcastran 2021-06-08 14:15:26 UTC
Description of problem:
EPEL 8 contains the $releasever variable in the baseurl. The only valid setting is 8 so we don't need a variable here. Any customers that set the releasver using "--releasever" or with "/etc/yum/vars/releasever" will encounter a 404 unless they set to 8, which affects Azure or RHUI customers. 

Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable):


How reproducible:
Everytime

Steps to Reproduce:
1. # yum repolist --enablerepo=epel --releasever=8.4
2.
3.

Actual results:
  - Status code: 404 for https://mirrors.fedoraproject.org/metalink?repo=epel-8.4&arch=x86_64&infra=$infra&content=$contentdir (IP: 209.132.190.2)
Error: Failed to download metadata for repo 'epel': Cannot prepare internal mirrorlist: Status code: 404 for https://mirrors.fedoraproject.org/metalink?repo=epel-8.4&arch=x86_64&infra=$infra&content=$contentdir (IP: 209.132.190.2)

Expected results:
Remove the "$releasever" variable and customers can always access the EPEL content.




Additional info:
Discussed here
   https://access.redhat.com/discussions/5473561

Workaround:
   # sed -i 's/$releasever/8/g' /etc/yum.repos.d/epel.repo

Comment 1 Kyle Walker 2021-06-10 15:44:57 UTC
Moving to the epel-release component:

    $ rpm -qp https://iad.mirror.rackspace.com/epel/epel-release-latest-8.noarch.rpm --qf "%{SOURCERPM}\n"
    epel-release-8-10.el8.src.rpm

Comment 2 Kyle Walker 2021-06-10 16:28:12 UTC
Filed a PR upstream replacing $releasever with 8.

https://src.fedoraproject.org/rpms/epel-release/pull-request/14

Comment 3 Kevin Fenzi 2021-06-10 18:23:13 UTC
Yeah, thats the simple fix... but now that we are snapshotting/archiving epel at minor rhel releases, perhaps we should teach mirrormanager about the minor releases?

That would let people use the archived versions easier, but also would mean that people on say 8.3 would stay on the archived epel until they upgraded to 8.4 so they may not be aware that they are not getting updates. 

Should discuss more. Please don't merge the pr yet.

Comment 4 Kyle Walker 2021-06-10 19:39:46 UTC
(In reply to Kevin Fenzi from comment #3)
> Yeah, thats the simple fix... but now that we are snapshotting/archiving
> epel at minor rhel releases, perhaps we should teach mirrormanager about the
> minor releases?

Interesting! 

/me Didn't know that was an ongoing discussion.


> That would let people use the archived versions easier, but also would mean
> that people on say 8.3 would stay on the archived epel until they upgraded
> to 8.4 so they may not be aware that they are not getting updates. 
> 
> Should discuss more. Please don't merge the pr yet.

No worries. I'll consider this notice to hold tight. If there is any further assistance I can offer, feel free to let me know!

Comment 5 Kevin Fenzi 2021-07-30 17:34:18 UTC
Adding Adrian here for comment. 

Can we adjust mirrormanager here to accept 8.x and redirect 8.1, 8.2, 8.3, to archive snapshots and 8.4 or 8 to current?

But that does have the downside that those people going to snapshots will never ever get updates and they may not realize it.

Comment 6 Troy Dawson 2021-07-30 18:15:04 UTC
I am concerned about people not getting their updates.
Can we go the other way, and have 8.{1,2,3,4..} redirect to 8 ?

Comment 7 Adrian Reber 2021-07-31 06:58:12 UTC
(In reply to Kevin Fenzi from comment #5)
> Adding Adrian here for comment. 
> 
> Can we adjust mirrormanager here to accept 8.x and redirect 8.1, 8.2, 8.3,
> to archive snapshots and 8.4 or 8 to current?
> 
> But that does have the downside that those people going to snapshots will
> never ever get updates and they may not realize it.

This is complicated from MirrorManager's side. We do not scan the archive currently for new repositories, because we had problems before that we picked up really old and deprecated stuff. So currently it is difficult to create repositories for the archived 8.x content. But only because we never did it before. This would be somehow fixable. Not nice, but fixable.

MirrorManager cannot handle repository names based on wildcards or regex. We can, however, create manual repository redirects. So if someone would ask for 'epel-8.4' we could add an entry to the database to point to 'epel-8'. That is, however, a manual step currently. For something like this I would recommend a webserver level redirect/rewrite like we did at some point for '7Server' to '7'.

Comment 8 Terry Bowling 2022-02-24 19:29:12 UTC
The EPEL ecosystem is important to Red Hat's supported RHEL customer base.  

Could we please implement the interim workaround of hardcoding "8" for now, and then implement your long term desired solution after the other required changes are implemented?  We have been providing a broken user experience for a very long time now.

thank you.

Comment 9 Troy Dawson 2022-02-24 19:54:18 UTC
I agree with Terry's sentiment.
Let's change this now, and when (or if) we get the infrastructure to be able to handle a variable, we change it back to the variable.

Comment 10 Fedora Update System 2022-03-14 21:59:45 UTC
FEDORA-EPEL-2022-9c9fab6933 has been submitted as an update to Fedora EPEL 8. https://bodhi.fedoraproject.org/updates/FEDORA-EPEL-2022-9c9fab6933

Comment 11 Fedora Update System 2022-03-15 16:13:54 UTC
FEDORA-EPEL-2022-9c9fab6933 has been pushed to the Fedora EPEL 8 testing repository.

You can provide feedback for this update here: https://bodhi.fedoraproject.org/updates/FEDORA-EPEL-2022-9c9fab6933

See also https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/QA:Updates_Testing for more information on how to test updates.

Comment 12 Fedora Update System 2022-03-22 23:46:55 UTC
FEDORA-EPEL-2022-9c9fab6933 has been pushed to the Fedora EPEL 8 stable repository.
If problem still persists, please make note of it in this bug report.

Comment 13 Brian J. Murrell 2022-03-26 13:55:29 UTC
(In reply to Kevin Fenzi from comment #3)
> now that we are snapshotting/archiving
> epel at minor rhel releases

Really?  Where can I find these archived minor releases?  I.e. I don't see anything at https://dl.fedoraproject.org/pub/epel/ reflecting that.

Comment 14 Kevin Fenzi 2022-03-26 18:19:18 UTC
https://dl.fedoraproject.org/pub/archive/epel/


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