How do you use one Ubuntu box as a package repository for another box?

Question

Hi there, Our dev environment has 6 Ubuntu machines, and it'd be nice if we could download the latest version of Ubuntu with one, and then use our local LAN to distribute the new packages between the other computers. This would save us loads of time in downloading the new packages (our connection is REALLY slow).

Anyone know how to do this?

Oh, and I've briefly looked at the Ubuntu documentation for personal repositories, and it doesn't appear to be exactly what I'm describing, I could have misread it though.

Thanks! Bernie

Answer 1

We used approx in our office for quite some time. The only real modification you have to make is that you need to point your sources.list at the box that hosts the proxy.

Approx itself is a caching proxy, so you have to point your boxes at the machine running the proxy. The first time you download packages will take just as long, but any subsequent downloads of that package will be fast.

Answer 2

This is for Redhat yum:

Create Personal repository

you can definitely create your own repository, but with all the trouble maintaining it, I think it is easier to download everything again from the web for each machine, at least if the number is 6. for 60 I would invest the effort.

Answer 3

You might want to take a look at apt-proxy. Basically you set that up on one of the machines, then point the other machines sources.list to retrieve updates via that machine.

An article related on setting it up for Debian (very similar) can be found here: http://blogs.koolwal.net/2008/04/16/setting-up-debian-proxy-cache-server-for-deb-packages/