nixCraft

The system I'm working on does not have network access. I've setup the 7 cd iso's for RHEL 5.3 as repos for my 5.3 install by following the steps at the following:
Howto Setup yum repositories to update or install package from ISO CDROM Image

Red Hat Knowledgebase: How would I use yum to update or install packages from a ISO of Red Hat Enterprise Linux version 5?

"yum search random_app" returns the correct responces, and a "yum install random_app" resolves dependencies and attempts to install, until: "unable to verify random_app public key is not installed"

do I have to generate a gpg key? how do I host it for yum to import it? is there any workaround? I'd really appreciate assistance.

Usually, you need to run following under RHEL 4:
Under RHEL 5 path is different /etc/pki/rpm-gpg/
There are multiple keys, import required keys as per your setup. using rpm --import command. Running following should fix the problem:
Also, RPM-GPG-KEY should be on CD itself. Assuming ISO image is mounted in /mnt/disk1/, use the following command to import it into the keyring:

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well, that should have worked, though the import of keys from both those locations failed. Luckily the guy next to me slapped some sense into me and reminded me to edit the file in /etc/yum.repos.d/ (we called it file.repo) to include the line,
"gpgcheck=0"
and amazingly it works, and installs, and all is right with the world