View Information(Description and Required Packages) of a group using yum

In one of my earlier post, I wrote about finding available software groups on CentOS/RedHat/Fedora. But you might not know what each of these group is for, what packages it will install and stuff like that. This is the topic of this post.

Let's say I want to know more about the group "Basic Web Server". To view the information, run the following command,

yum groups info "Basic Web Server"

Loaded plugins: fastestmirror, langpacks
Loading mirror speeds from cached hostfile

Environment Group: Basic Web Server
 Environment-Id: web-server-environment
 Description: Server for serving static and dynamic internet content.
 Mandatory Groups:
   +base
   +core
   +web-server
 Optional Groups:
   +backup-client
   +debugging
   +directory-client
   +guest-agents
   +hardware-monitoring
   +java-platform
   +large-systems
   +load-balancer
   +mariadb-client
   +network-file-system-client
   +performance
   +perl-web
   +php
   +postgresql-client
   +python-web
   +remote-system-management
   +web-servlet

That's it.

Tested on: CentOS 7

Install a group of packages on CentOS/RedHat/Fedora using yum

In the previous post, I wrote about how to find the available software/package groups on CentOS/RedHat/Fedora OS using yum. But how do we install a group? I will show you how to install a group of packages with yum.

Let's say we want to install a minimal graphical user interface (GUI) on our server. So the group to install for that is, "Server with GUI".

To install this group, run the following command,

yum groups install "Server with GUI"

It should work. Thank you.

Tested on: CentOS 7

View the Available Software Groups using yum on CentOS/RedHat/Fedora

To view the available groups of packages on CentOS/RedHat/Fedora, run the following command,

yum groups list

Loaded plugins: fastestmirror, langpacks
Loading mirror speeds from cached hostfile
Available Environment Groups:
   Minimal Install
   Compute Node
   Infrastructure Server
   File and Print Server
   Basic Web Server
   Virtualization Host
   Server with GUI
   GNOME Desktop
   KDE Plasma Workspaces
   Development and Creative Workstation
Available Groups:
   Compatibility Libraries
   Console Internet Tools
   Development Tools
   Graphical Administration Tools
   Legacy UNIX Compatibility
   Scientific Support
   Security Tools
   Smart Card Support
   System Administration Tools
   System Management
Done

You can see from the output that, theres a lot of available groups on my system such as "Server with GUI", "Basic Web Server" etc.

Tested on: CentOS 7