[plug] creating a repository

[Patrick Coleman]

On 4/6/06, Gavin Chester <sales at ecosolutions.com.au> wrote:
>
>
>    >-----Original Message-----
>    >From: plug-bounces at plug.org.au [mailto:plug-bounces at plug.org.au]On
>    >Behalf Of Kev
>    >Sent: Thursday, 6 April 2006 15:18
>    >To: PLUG
>    >Subject: [plug] creating a repository
>    >
>    >
>    >Greetings PLUGgers (and other humanoids)
>    >
>    >Can someone perhaps point me at some guide or software or such-like so
>    >that I can create my own local repository.  My aim is to create a small
>    >repository on my local (home) network so that I only have to download
>    >software once, and then others here at home can install from my local
>    >repository.  I don't have any clue at this stage what makes a
>    >repository, or how one is structured, so I need beginners' stuff.
>    >
>
> AS far as I remember:
>
> Say, you're using yum, apt or whatever you'll find that the downloaded files
> are cached on your local drive in /var/cache-something.  You can simply
> never delete the files and headers from your cache and have all users point
> their updater-of-choice to that directory on your drive when they are
> configuring which repositories to use.

I've tried both the methods mentioned here on my network, and I had
problems with sharing the /var/cache/apt/archives folder. It worked,
but when someone else had a copy of synaptic, aptitude, apt-get or
whatnot running my copy would throw strange errors (and vice-versa),
from memory because of locking issues. We then switched to apt-proxy,
which worked perfectly. It basically acts as a network cache for
debian packages, so you only ever download a package once over your
net connection, no matter how many client machines you have.

Installation is simple, just apt-get install apt-proxy and change the
sources in the config file. Then change your clients
/etc/apt/source.list files to point to the proxy, run apt-get update
on the clients and you're away.

The docs are very good - see man apt-proxy and man apt-proxy.conf.

-Patrick
--
http://www.labyrinthdata.net.au