diff --git a/xCAT-buildkit/bin/buildkit b/xCAT-buildkit/bin/buildkit
index 1871410e2..afc2c2969 100755
--- a/xCAT-buildkit/bin/buildkit
+++ b/xCAT-buildkit/bin/buildkit
@@ -626,6 +626,15 @@ sub kit_buildrepo
 
     my $rc = 0;
     my $repoid = $::KIT_BUILDREPO;
+
+    if ( !$debianflag ){
+
+        # Check if createrepo bin exists or not.  Fail at the beginning.
+        if (! (-e "/usr/bin/createrepo") ) {
+            print "Error: /usr/bin/createrepo does not exist, install createrepo first\n";
+            return 1;
+        }
+    }
     $repoid =~ s/\s+//g;
     $repoid =~ tr/A-Z/a-z/;   # convert to lowercase
     if ( $repoid ne 'all' ) { 
diff --git a/xCAT-buildkit/xCAT-buildkit.spec b/xCAT-buildkit/xCAT-buildkit.spec
index 179422ce8..766465817 100644
--- a/xCAT-buildkit/xCAT-buildkit.spec
+++ b/xCAT-buildkit/xCAT-buildkit.spec
@@ -25,7 +25,7 @@ BuildArch: noarch
 
 # No dependencies on any other xCAT rpms
 # so that this rpm can be installed in a separate build server
-Requires: /usr/bin/rpmbuild createrepo
+Requires: /usr/bin/rpmbuild
 
 Provides: xCAT-buildkit = %{epoch}:%{version}