How To Install oscap on CentOS 8

One-liner Install Command

If you are only interested in the installation command, here is a quick answer for you:

sudo yum makecache && sudo yum -y install openscap-scanner

sudo dnf makecache && sudo dnf -y install openscap-scanner

But if you are interested in the details with step-by-step instructions, the following information will be helpful.

What is oscap and How to Install It?

First things first, you will need access to a server or computer running CentOS 8. This guide was written specifically with a server running CentOS 8 in mind, although it should also work on older, supported versions of the operating system.

Also, make sure you are running a regular, non-root user with sudo privileges configured on your server. When you have an account available, log in as your non-root user to begin.

There are several ways to install oscap on CentOS 8. You can use (links are clickable):

In the following sections, we will describe each method in detail. You can choose one of them or refer to the recommended one.

Install oscap on CentOS 8 using dnf

First, update dnf packages database with dnf by running the next command:

sudo dnf makecache --refresh

After updating database, You can install oscap using dnf by running the following command:

sudo dnf -y install openscap-scanner

Install oscap on CentOS 8 using yum

Because oscap is available in CentOS 8’s default repositories, it is possible to install it from these repositories using the yum packaging system.

To begin, update local packages database with yum using the following command.

sudo yum makecache --refresh

Now can install oscap package on your server/computer by running the following command:

sudo yum -y install openscap-scanner

How to upgrade (update) a single package oscap using yum?

To update all the packages available on the system:

yum update

If you want to update a specific package like oscap in this example you should use the following command:

yum update openscap-scanner

To downgrade a package to an earlier version:

yum downgrade openscap-scanner

How to Upgrade oscap on CentOS 8 with dnf?

When you run the dnf update, all system packages with available updates are updated. However, if you want to upgrade a single package, then you would have to pass the package name as the argument to the dnf update command.

dnf update openscap-scanner

How To remove oscap from CentOS 8

To uninstall only the oscap package you can execute the following command:

sudo dnf remove openscap-scanner

Extra info and code examples

OpenSCAP is a set of open source libraries providing an easier path for integration of the SCAP line of standards. SCAP is a line of standards managed by NIST with the goal of providing a standard language for the expression of Computer Network Defense related information. The intended scope of this project is to implement working interface wrappers for parsing and querying SCAP content including: * Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE) * Common Configuration Enumeration (CCE) * Common Platform Enumeration (CPE) * Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS) * Extensible Configuration Checklist Description Format (XCCDF) * Open Vulnerability and Assessment Language (OVAL)

Conclusion

You now have a full guide on how to install oscap using dnf and yum package managers. Also, we showed how to update manually as a single package and different ways to uninstall the oscap from CentOS 8.

See also: