Sharing apt cache across multiple machines
Drake Diedrich
dld at coyote.com.au
Fri Nov 23 14:56:54 EST 2001
On Fri, Nov 23, 2001 at 02:19:52PM +1100, James Macnicol wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I have a laptop with the bleeding-edge Debian on it which I
> occasionally take to a place with readily available bandwidth to
> update to the latest set of packages. My desktop machine at home,
> unfortunately, only has 56k modem connectivity and thus keeping it up
> to date is a hassle. Since all the downloaded .deb files are kept in
> /var/cache/apt/archive (or whatever it's called) I would like to use
> this to update my desktop box when it is connected to my laptop via
> Ethernet. Has anyone seen a definitive set of instructions on how to
> do this ?
This is what I do: copy all the .debs to a RW CD (or Zip), and dump them
in a common directory on the home machine. Then run a pair of scripts
(purgepackages, scanpackages) to regenerate a new Packages.gz file. The
scanpackages file is similar to the one in dpkg-dev, but lists all packages.
purgepackages just deletes older versions of .debs. A small tarball will be
at http://www.coyote.com.au/~dld/sneakerdeb.tar.bz2 in a few minutes.
Your own private Debian archive for your home network.
Adding the following to /etc/apt/apt.conf will keep dselect from purging
your packages. Do that with apt-get clean after you've copied them off.
Apt::Clean-Installed {"off";};
DSelect::Clean {"never";};
-Drake
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