CentOS 6 has reached its end of life (EOL), and the Linux community no longer maintains this operating system version. We recommend that you upgrade your operating system to CentOS 7 or later. If you still require some of the installation packages of CentOS 6 during the transition, you can change the CentOS 6 source address for your images as instructed in this topic.

Background information

CentOS 6 has reached its EOL on November 30, 2020. In accordance with the community rules of Linux, the content at the source address http://mirror.centos.org/centos-6/ of CentOS 6 has been removed. All third-party image providers have already removed the CentOS 6 source address. The http://mirrors.cloud.aliyuncs.com and http://mirrors.aliyun.com source addresses of Alibaba Cloud cannot synchronize with the CentOS 6 source address. If you continue to use the default CentOS 6 source address on Alibaba Cloud, an error is reported. The following figure shows an example of the error.centos 6 error
You can perform the following procedure to change the source address configurations in the ECS instances that run CentOS 6 operating system based on the network environment.
  • YUM repository
    • For VPC-type instances, you must change the source address of YUM repository to http://mirrors.cloud.aliyuncs.com/centos-vault/6.10/.
    • For classic network-type instances, you must change the source address of YUM repository to http://mirrors.aliyuncs.com/centos-vault/6.10/.
  • EPEL repository
    • For VPC-type instances, you must change the source address of EPEL repository to http://mirrors.cloud.aliyuncs.com/epel-archive/6/.
    • For classic network-type instances, you must change the source address of EPEL repository to http://mirrors.aliyuncs.com/epel-archive/6/.
Note This topic describes how to change the CentOS 6 source address in ECS instances. If your server is not an ECS instance, make sure that the server is accessible from the Internet and that the http://mirrors.cloud.aliyuncs.com source address is replaced with http://mirrors.aliyun.com. For example, if you change the source address of a YUM repository, replace the source address with http://mirrors.aliyun.com/centos-vault/6.10/. If you change the source address of an EPEL repository, replace the source address with http://mirrors.aliyun.com/epel-archive/6/.

Procedure

  1. Connect to an ECS instance that runs CentOS 6.
    For more information, see Connection methods.
  2. Run the following command to modify the CentOS-Base.repo file: 
    vim /etc/yum.repos.d/CentOS-Base.repo
  3. Press the I key to enter the edit mode. Modify the following content to change the source address.
    Modify the file based on the network type of the instance.
    • VPC
      [base]
name=CentOS-6.10
enabled=1
failovermethod=priority
baseurl=http://mirrors.cloud.aliyuncs.com/centos-vault/6.10/os/$basearch/
gpgcheck=1
gpgkey=http://mirrors.cloud.aliyuncs.com/centos-vault/RPM-GPG-KEY-CentOS-6

[updates]
name=CentOS-6.10
enabled=1
failovermethod=priority
baseurl=http://mirrors.cloud.aliyuncs.com/centos-vault/6.10/updates/$basearch/
gpgcheck=1
gpgkey=http://mirrors.cloud.aliyuncs.com/centos-vault/RPM-GPG-KEY-CentOS-6

[extras]
name=CentOS-6.10
enabled=1
failovermethod=priority
baseurl=http://mirrors.cloud.aliyuncs.com/centos-vault/6.10/extras/$basearch/
gpgcheck=1
gpgkey=http://mirrors.cloud.aliyuncs.com/centos-vault/RPM-GPG-KEY-CentOS-6
    • Classic network
      [base]
name=CentOS-6.10
enabled=1
failovermethod=priority
baseurl=http://mirrors.aliyuncs.com/centos-vault/6.10/os/$basearch/
gpgcheck=1
gpgkey=http://mirrors.aliyuncs.com/centos-vault/RPM-GPG-KEY-CentOS-6

[updates]
name=CentOS-6.10
enabled=1
failovermethod=priority
baseurl=http://mirrors.aliyuncs.com/centos-vault/6.10/updates/$basearch/
gpgcheck=1
gpgkey=http://mirrors.aliyuncs.comm/centos-vault/RPM-GPG-KEY-CentOS-6

[extras]
name=CentOS-6.10
enabled=1
failovermethod=priority
baseurl=http://mirrors.aliyuncs.com/centos-vault/6.10/extras/$basearch/
gpgcheck=1
gpgkey=http://mirrors.aliyuncs.com/centos-vault/RPM-GPG-KEY-CentOS-6

    After you modify the file, press the Esc key to exit the edit mode and enter :wq to save and exit the file.

  4. Run the following command to edit the epel.repo file: 
    vim /etc/yum.repos.d/epel.repo
  5. Press the I key to enter the edit mode. Modify the following content to change the source address.
    Modify the file based on the network type of the instance.
    • VPC
      [epel]
name=Extra Packages for Enterprise Linux 6 - $basearch
enabled=1
failovermethod=priority
baseurl=http://mirrors.cloud.aliyuncs.com/epel-archive/6/$basearch
gpgcheck=0
gpgkey=http://mirrors.cloud.aliyuncs.com/epel-archive/RPM-GPG-KEY-EPEL-6
    • Classic network
      [epel]
name=Extra Packages for Enterprise Linux 6 - $basearch
enabled=1
failovermethod=priority
baseurl=http://mirrors.aliyuncs.com/epel-archive/6/$basearch
gpgcheck=0
gpgkey=http://mirrors.aliyuncs.com/epel-archive/RPM-GPG-KEY-EPEL-6

    After you modify the file, press the Esc key to exit the edit mode and enter :wq to save and exit the file.

What to do next

After you change the source addresses of a YUM repository and an EPEL repository, you can use the yum install command to install the software packages that you need on the instance.

If you create an ECS instance by using a custom image, when you start the instance, cloud-init automatically initializes the source address configurations of the system. If you want to create a custom image from the ECS instance that has the source address changed and want to retain the original source address configurations, you must perform the following operations to modify the cloud-init configuration file of /etc/cloud/cloud.cfg in the ECS instance that has the source address changed before you create the custom image.
  1. Run the following command to edit the /etc/cloud/cloud.cfg file: 
    vim /etc/cloud/cloud.cfg
  2. Press the I key to enter the edit mode, and use # to comment out the - source-address module under cloud_init_modules:.
    The following figure shows the configuration information in the file.cloudinit
  3. After you modify the file, press the Esc key to exit the edit mode and enter :wq to save and exit the file.