Fix the yum Command on CentOS 7

CentOS 7 reached its end of life (EOL - End Of Life) on June 30, 2024 and the mirrors used for updates and package installation no longer respond. However, the files were moved to an “archive” (the vault). This article shows how to fix the repository to point to vault.centos.org to access the archived packages and thus make it possible to use the yum command to install packages on CentOS 7.

1. Backup

Before making changes, make a copy of the CentOS base repository file.

cp -avr /etc/yum.repos.d/CentOS-Base.repo /etc/yum.repos.d/CentOS-Base.repo.backup

2. Edit the CentOS-Base.repo file to point to the Vault

Open the file with a text editor (vi, nano…)

vi /etc/yum.repos.d/CentOS-Base.repo

Inside the file, look for lines that start with mirrorlist= and comment them out (add a # at the beginning of the line). Then uncomment (remove the #) the lines that start with baseurl= and change the URL to http://vault.centos.org/7.9.2009/.

You will need to do this for the [base], [updates], and [extras] sections (you can also do it for [centosplus] if you wish).

Here is an example of how it should look:

[base]
name=CentOS-$releasever - Base
#mirrorlist=http://mirrorlist.centos.org/?release=$releasever&arch=$basearch&repo=os&infra=$infra
baseurl=http://vault.centos.org/7.9.2009/os/$basearch/
gpgcheck=1
gpgkey=file:///etc/pki/rpm-gpg/RPM-GPG-KEY-CentOS-7

#released updates
[updates]
name=CentOS-$releasever - Updates
#mirrorlist=http://mirrorlist.centos.org/?release=$releasever&arch=$basearch&repo=updates&infra=$infra
baseurl=http://vault.centos.org/7.9.2009/updates/$basearch/
gpgcheck=1
gpgkey=file:///etc/pki/rpm-gpg/RPM-GPG-KEY-CentOS-7

#additional packages that may be useful
[extras]
name=CentOS-$releasever - Extras
#mirrorlist=http://mirrorlist.centos.org/?release=$releasever&arch=$basearch&repo=extras&infra=$infra
baseurl=http://vault.centos.org/7.9.2009/extras/$basearch/
gpgcheck=1
gpgkey=file:///etc/pki/rpm-gpg/RPM-GPG-KEY-CentOS-7

#additional packages that extend functionality of existing packages
[centosplus]
name=CentOS-$releasever - Plus
#mirrorlist=http://mirrorlist.centos.org/?release=$releasever&arch=$basearch&repo=centosplus&infra=$infra
baseurl=http://vault.centos.org/7.9.2009/centosplus/$basearch/
gpgcheck=1
enabled=0
gpgkey=file:///etc/pki/rpm-gpg/RPM-GPG-KEY-CentOS-7

Save and close the file.

Clean the yum cache.

yum clean all

You can now install the desired packages using the yum command.