OEL 5 Repository Configuration.

Oracle Enterprise Linux 5 as shipped isn't connected to the free public yum OEL repositories.

In order to fix this to get system updates and any packages, you need to set Yum up.

This is massively easier than it looks.

Ensure your OEL system can reach the Net e.g. via

wget http://www.google.ie or some such.

We need to get the public repo details so

cd /etc/yum.repos.d

wget http://public-yum.oracle.com/public-yum-el5.repo

It should download the repo file to this directory. 

Assuming you want the latest build of everything, you are done, as the latest repo is by default enabled ; otherwise edit the repo file to enable the version you want 

Then it's just yum update.

All done. 

* Note el5 is different for el4 and el6 of course.