In general, the software version in CentOS are behind. It's just the way CentOS and Red Hat operate. They aim for long term support and stability.

But if you have to use a newer software package, you may find that some newer packages in CentOS's test repository, as listed in this page Available Repositories for CentOS. For CentOS 5 testing packages, you can find them in http://dev.centos.org/centos/5/testing/.

How do I yum install SRPM from CentOS/Red Hat site, instead of manually download the srpm from one of the ftp website?

Install yum-utils

# yum install yum-utils

Get the dependency

If the package is already installed, use "rpm -qR <package-name>" to get the list of packages that this package depends on. For example:

$ rpm -qR openldap

If the package is not yet installed, use "yum  deplist <package-name>" to get the list of packages that this package depends on. For example:

The chapter Signing Packages in Maximum RPM explains clearly on how to sign RPM packages.

There are a few things to note though. In the page http://www.rpm.org/max-rpm/s1-rpm-pgp-getting-ready.html, it asked to put the gpg key name name path into rpmrc. This has changed. You have to put the following into ~/.rpmmacros:

• http://genetikayos.com/code/repos/rpm-tutorial/trunk/rpm-tutorial.html
• http://www.rpm.org/max-rpm/
• http://www.gurulabs.com/downloads/GURULABS-RPM-LAB/GURULABS-RPM-GUIDE-v1...

Prepare GPG key

Create the repository

This will show you how to create the repository over http.

First create directory structure on the server, say server1:

[root@server1 ~]# mkdir -p /var/www/repo/CentOS/4/local/i386/RPMS

If createrepo is not already installed, as it will not be by default, install it.