How to install a specific version of MySQL (or other app) via yum

To install an alternate version of, in this case, MySQL, rather than to accept the version that is available via the base and update yum repositories for CentOS, there are several ways of going about this.  You could install via tar.gz or download RPMs and yum install them directly; however, adding the official MySQL repository will work too.  It is important to note, that using the official MySQL repository will install the latest version of MySQL for that point.point release.  What if you wanted a previous version?  Here is how I did it.

Create access to the MySQL repository.  There are several to choose from. 5.5, 5.6, or 5.7. This example will use 5.5.

echo '[mysql55]
name=MySQL 5.5
baseurl=http://repo.mysql.com/yum/mysql-5.5-community/el/6/x86_64
gpgcheck=0' > /etc/yum.repos.d/MySQL-5.5.repo

The following command can install the latest version of MySQL 5.5.x.

yum install mysql-community-server

It also shows all the dependencies.

mysql-community-server          x86_64     5.5.50-2.el6      mysql55      38 M
mysql-community-client          x86_64     5.5.50-2.el6      mysql55      14 M
mysql-community-common          x86_64     5.5.50-2.el6      mysql55     277 k
mysql-community-libs            x86_64     5.5.50-2.el6      mysql55     1.7 M
mysql-community-libs-compat     x86_64     5.5.50-2.el6      mysql55     1.6 M

A most effective method to determine the names of the files to install, the repoquery command is used. To get this command, install yum-utils.

yum install yum-utils

Run the repoquery like so.

repoquery --show-duplicates mysql-community-server

The results should look like this.

mysql-community-server-0:5.5.35-1.el6.x86_64
mysql-community-server-0:5.5.36-1.el6.x86_64
mysql-community-server-0:5.5.37-4.el6.x86_64
mysql-community-server-0:5.5.38-2.el6.x86_64
mysql-community-server-0:5.5.39-5.el6.x86_64
mysql-community-server-0:5.5.40-2.el6.x86_64
mysql-community-server-0:5.5.41-2.el6.x86_64
mysql-community-server-0:5.5.42-2.el6.x86_64
mysql-community-server-0:5.5.43-2.el6.x86_64
mysql-community-server-0:5.5.44-2.el6.x86_64
mysql-community-server-0:5.5.45-2.el6.x86_64
mysql-community-server-0:5.5.46-2.el6.x86_64
mysql-community-server-0:5.5.47-2.el6.x86_64
mysql-community-server-0:5.5.48-2.el6.x86_64
mysql-community-server-0:5.5.49-2.el6.x86_64
mysql-community-server-0:5.5.50-2.el6.x86_64

Let’s assume that the desired version is 5.5.49.  Based on the dependencies listed above and using repoquery to search for mysql-community*.  The following command installed the desired version of MySQL.

yum install mysql-community-common-0:5.5.49-2.el6.x86_64 \
mysql-community-server-0:5.5.49-2.el6.x86_64 \
mysql-community-libs-compat-0:5.5.49-2.el6.x86_64 \
mysql-community-libs-0:5.5.49-2.el6.x86_64 \
mysql-community-client-0:5.5.49-2.el6.x86_64

Source(s)
http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/151689/how-can-i-instruct-yum-to-install-a-specific-version-of-package-x