Failed to Download Metadata for Repo ...

Linux Tutorials - Herong's Tutorial Examples

∟Software Package Manager on CentOS - DNF and YUM

∟Failed to Download Metadata for Repo ...

This section provides a tutorial example on how to fix the error, Failed to Download Metadata for Repo 'AppStream', on CentOS 8 computer.

As you may known, CentOS Linux 8 had reached the End Of Life (EOL) on December 31st, 2021. There will be no more updates to CentOS 8 and its packages are moved to the archive repository vault.centos.org from mirror.centos.org.

If you running "dnf/yum" commands with mirror.centos.org repository on your CentOS 8 computer, you will get the following message: "Error: Failed to download metadata for repo 'appstream': Cannot prepare internal mirrorlist: No URLs in mirrorlist". For example:

herong$ sudo dnf info wget

CentOS Linux 8 - AppStream                    90  B/s |  38  B     00:00
Error: Failed to download metadata for repo 'appstream':
  Cannot prepare internal mirrorlist: No URLs in mirrorlist

To continue maintaining software packages on your CentOS 8 computer, you need to update your package repository configuration files as shown below:

1. Backup repository configuration files:

herong$ cd /etc/yum.repos.d

herong$ sudo mkdir backup

herong$ sudo cp -p CentOS-*.repo backup

2. Stop using 'mirrorlist.centos.org' and open 'baseurl' to vault.centos.org:

herong$ sudo sed -i 's|mirrorlist|#mirrorlist|g' CentOS-*.repo

herong$ sudo sed -i \
  's|#baseurl=http://mirror|baseurl=http://vault|g' CentOS-*.repo

herong$ sudo grep vault CentOS-*.repo

3. Try to run "dnf/yum" commands again. I see no problem accessing CentOS Linux 8 repositories:

herong$ sudo dnf info wget
CentOS Linux 8 - AppStream                    2.0 MB/s | 8.4 MB     00:04
CentOS Linux 8 - BaseOS                       423 kB/s | 4.6 MB     00:11
CentOS Linux 8 - Extras                       4.2 kB/s |  10 kB     00:02

Installed Packages
Name         : wget
Version      : 1.19.5
Release      : 10.el8
Architecture : x86_64
Size         : 2.8 M
Source       : wget-1.19.5-10.el8.src.rpm
Repository   : @System
From repo    : AppStream
...