yum error “Cannot retrieve metalink for repository: epel. Please verify its path and try again” updating ContextBroker

Question

I\'m trying to update Orion ContextBroker using the command yum install contextBroker. Unfortunatelly I get the following error:

Loaded plugins: fast

Answer 1

I encountered the same issue even though the ca-certificates package is up-to-date. The mirror https://mirrors.fedoraproject.org/ is currently signed by DigiCert High Assurance EV Root CA which is included in my ca-bundle

$ grep -A 3 "DigiCert High" /etc/ssl/certs/ca-bundle.crt 
# DigiCert High Assurance EV Root CA
-----BEGIN CERTIFICATE-----
MIIDxTCCAq2gAwIBAgIQAqxcJmoLQJuPC3nyrkYldzANBgkqhkiG9w0BAQUFADBs
MQswCQYDVQQGEwJVUzEVMBMGA1UEChMMRGlnaUNlcnQgSW5jMRkwFwYDVQQLExB3

The reason why https connections failed in my case, was that system date was set to the year 2002 in which the DigiCert High Assurance EV Root CA is not (yet) valid.

$ date
Di 1. Jan 11:10:35 CET 2002

Changing the system time fixed the issue.

Answer 2

Check if you access internet through a proxy, and then your add internet proxy address to yum configuration.

add

proxy=http://ip:port

to /etc/yum.conf

Answer 3

In my case when I comment out mirrorlist the error got away but the repo was also not working so I manually point the right baseurl in /etc/yum.repos.d/epel.repo as below

[epel]
name=Extra Packages for Enterprise Linux 7 - $basearch
baseurl=http://iad.mirror.rackspace.com/epel/7Server/x86_64/
#metalink=https://mirrors.fedoraproject.org/metalink?repo=epel-7&arch=$basearch&infra=$infra&content=$contentdir
failovermethod=priority
enabled=1
gpgcheck=1
gpgkey=file:///etc/pki/rpm-gpg/RPM-GPG-KEY-EPEL-7

[epel-debuginfo]
name=Extra Packages for Enterprise Linux 7 - $basearch - Debug
baseurl=http://iad.mirror.rackspace.com/epel/7Server/x86_64/debug/
#metalink=https://mirrors.fedoraproject.org/metalink?repo=epel-debug-7&arch=$basearch&infra=$infra&content=$contentdir
failovermethod=priority
enabled=0
gpgkey=file:///etc/pki/rpm-gpg/RPM-GPG-KEY-EPEL-7
gpgcheck=1

[epel-source]
name=Extra Packages for Enterprise Linux 7 - $basearch - Source
baseurl=http://iad.mirror.rackspace.com/epel/7Server/SRPMS/
#metalink=https://mirrors.fedoraproject.org/metalink?repo=epel-source-7&arch=$basearch&infra=$infra&content=$contentdir
failovermethod=priority
enabled=0
gpgkey=file:///etc/pki/rpm-gpg/RPM-GPG-KEY-EPEL-7
gpgcheck=1