yum repolist will display the active repo list, I suspect the packages your looking for are not in the base/update/extras repositories and you may need to add additional repositories.

A good way to find out is to google search the package your looking for to get an idea of repository you need to have setup or install.

A lot of repositories do have a RPM file that will install the repository for your or a "how to" for adding the repository.

Examples below

Red Hat has made the documentation free to read
9.5.2. Setting [repository] Options

IUS repo setup
IUS Getting Started

yum repolist example:

Loaded plugins: fastestmirror, ovl
Determining fastest mirrors
 * base: mirror.its.sfu.ca
 * extras: mirror.it.ubc.ca
 * updates: centos.mirror.rafal.ca
base                                                                                                                                                                                                                  | 3.6 kB  00:00:00     
extras                                                                                                                                                                                                                | 3.4 kB  00:00:00     
updates                                                                                                                                                                                                               | 3.4 kB  00:00:00     
(1/4): base/7/x86_64/group_gz                                                                                                                                                                                         | 166 kB  00:00:00     
(2/4): extras/7/x86_64/primary_db                                                                                                                                                                                     | 150 kB  00:00:00     
(3/4): updates/7/x86_64/primary_db                                                                                                                                                                                    | 3.6 MB  00:00:00     
(4/4): base/7/x86_64/primary_db                                                                                                                                                                                       | 5.9 MB  00:00:01     
repo id                                                                                                           repo name                                                                                                            status
base/7/x86_64                                                                                                     CentOS-7 - Base                                                                                                      9911
extras/7/x86_64                                                                                                   CentOS-7 - Extras                                                                                                     314
updates/7/x86_64                                                                                                  CentOS-7 - Updates                                                                                                    946
repolist: 11171

Apparently this is a restriction of the particular dnf installed on Amazon Linux 2023:

Note that microdnf does not support all options of dnf. For example, you cannot install a remote rpm using the rpm’s URL or install a local rpm file. Instead, you can use the rpm command directly to install such packages.

A trick to get around this is to use rpm to determine the file's dependencies, and then to pass those to dnf.

dnf install -y `rpm -qR R-${R_VERSION}-1-1.x86_64.rpm | tr '\n' ' ' `

For anyone finding this through a web search, the following lines are needed for the Dockerfile. The last part is optional, but it deletes the rpm after installation to save a little space:

RUN dnf install -y `rpm -qR R-${R_VERSION}-1-1.x86_64.rpm | tr '\n' ' ' `

RUN rpm -i R-${R_VERSION}-1-1.x86_64.rpm \
    && rm R-${R_VERSION}-1-1.x86_64.rpm

sudo yum install dnf-plugins-core did the trick for me.

UPDATE: on el7, el8, el9 there is a better way

• when you try to execute dnf config-manager -h it will tell you to try dnf install 'dnf-command(config-manager)'

# centos7
# rocky8
# rocky9
sudo dnf install 'dnf-command(config-manager)'

p.s. the high level solution is actually "try to execute the dnf config-manager -h and if the command fails then read the error message and try installing what the error message recommends".

Modern versions of yum (yum-3.4.3-133.el7+, ticket) provide two options that should help with this use-case:

skip_missing_names_on_install If set to False, 'yum install' will fail if it can't find any of the provided names (package, group, rpm file). Boolean (1, 0, True, False, yes, no). Defaults to True.

skip_missing_names_on_update If set to False, 'yum update' will fail if it can't find any of the provided names (package, group, rpm file). It will also fail if the provided name is a package which is available, but not installed. Boolean (1, 0, True, False, yes, no). Defaults to True.

Source: man-pages

Usage:

yum --setopt=skip_missing_names_on_install=False <commands-here>

I can't believe it took me so long to figure it out.

I stumbled upon this website which stated :

Not installed package

When a required package is not installed, do_rootfs will fail with errors.

The most happened error is Could not invoke dnf or No match for argument: , which is caused by do_install was not run, or by do_compile did not produce any output.

Which made me look back at the do_install() portion of my code only to realize that I had a slash "/" missing after every ${D} * facepalm *

This is the new and working do_install() block is

do_install(){
    install -d -m 0755 ${D}/home/user1/.ssh
    chown -R user1 ${D}/home/user1
}

WARNING: EPEL 7 DNF is very old and has issues to include security flaws. This appears to be the reason it was removed. That said here is the work around to get it working on Centos 7.

wget http://springdale.math.ias.edu/data/puias/unsupported/7/x86_64/dnf-conf-0.6.4-2.sdl7.noarch.rpm
wget http://springdale.math.ias.edu/data/puias/unsupported/7/x86_64//dnf-0.6.4-2.sdl7.noarch.rpm
wget http://springdale.math.ias.edu/data/puias/unsupported/7/x86_64/python-dnf-0.6.4-2.sdl7.noarch.rpm
yum install python-dnf-0.6.4-2.sdl7.noarch.rpm  dnf-0.6.4-2.sdl7.noarch.rpm dnf-conf-0.6.4-2.sdl7.noarch.rpm

Since cmake3 is provided by the cmake package, that package will be installed by yum install, since no package with the exact cmake3 name exists:

# yum provides cmake3
cmake-3.11.4-7.el8.x86_64 : Cross-platform make system
Repo        : AppStream
Matched from:
Provide    : cmake3 = 3.11.4-7.el8

A similar example is in the yum manpage (which in RHEL8 redirects to dnf):

dnf install vim

DNF will automatically recognize that vim is not a package name, but will look up and install a package that provides vim with all the required dependencies. Note: Package name match has precedence over package provides match.