Saving time and bandwidth are two things every system administrator loves. Implementing apt-cacher could save you a considerable amount of both, depending on the number of servers you have. As the name implies, apt-cacher caches packages and package lists for apt packaging systems on Debian or Debian-like systems. Here's how I recently implemented apt-cacher:
apt-get install apt-cacher
I edited /etc/apt-cacher/apt-cacher.conf
cache_dir=/path/to/cache/directory admin_email=your@email.com daemon_addr=IPADDRESS
I also edited /etc/default/apt-cacher and set:
AUTOSTART=1
Then ran:
/etc/init.d/apt-cacher start
I imported the existing files apt-get had locally archived:
/usr/share/apt-cacher/apt-cacher-import.pl -r /var/cache/apt/archives
Finally, I edited /etc/apt/sources.list on the apt-cacher server, and each client server:
deb http://hostname:3142/ftp.us.debian.org/debian/ lenny main non-free contrib deb-src http://hostname:3142/ftp.us.debian.org/debian/ lenny main non-free contrib deb http://hostname:3142/security.debian.org/ lenny/updates main non-free contrib deb-src http://hostname:3142/security.debian.org/ lenny/updates main non-free contrib
at 12:36 am
You can also add the following to /etc/apt/apt.conf:
Acquire::http::Proxy "http://hostname:3142/apt-cacher";
I find this to be cleaner, rather than having to edit each repos entry in sources.list.
(It does mean all requests would be via the apt-cacher host, but I don't find that to be an issue)
at 7:39 am
@neg Nice! Thanks for the tip.