I am not an expert in server handling but I am learning and every small thing adds more dimensions to brainosphere. I found yum really cool as it makes life very simpler. If “Yum” sounded like a chocolate brand or a chicken brand to you then I better do some documentation.

Yum (Yellow dog Updater, Modified) is one automatic updater and package installer (and package remover) for rpm(the baseline package format of the Linux Standard Base) systems. Yum automatically computes dependencies and figures out steps to install packages. Manual updates will take everything out of you but yum makes it easier to maintain groups of machines without having to manually update each one using rpm.

We are using CentOS (Community ENTerprise Operating System) which is an Enterprise-class Linux Distribution derived from sources freely provided to the public by a prominent North American Enterprise Linux vendor. We use Yum to manage the packages.

I will just write about how to get a package from CentOS-Testing repository.
Two links which will help you understand about repositories

To enable the CentOSPlus repository, edit the file /etc/yum.repos.d/CentOS-Base.repo and look for the [centosplus] section. Here is how it looks by default:

#additional packages that extend functionality of existing packages
[centosplus]
name=CentOS-$releasever - Plus
mirrorlist=http://mirrorlist.centos.org/?release=$releasever&arch=$basearch&repo=centosplus
#baseurl=http://mirror.centos.org/centos/$releasever/centosplus/$basearch/
gpgcheck=1
enabled=0
gpgkey=http://mirror.centos.org/centos/RPM-GPG-KEY-centos4

Just make enable = 1 to use the centos-plus and to enable CentOS-Testing repo please add
[c4-testing]
name=CentOS-4 Testing
baseurl=http://dev.centos.org/centos/$releasever/testing/$basearch/
enabled=1
gpgcheck=1
gpgkey=http://dev.centos.org/centos/RPM-GPG-KEY-CentOS-testing

Hope it made some sense and I am sure you will like to explore following links