Re: CD for network install (Was: Debian DVDs)

[Robert Guthrie <rguthrie@pobox.com>]

I think you're talking about apt-proxy.  I've been using it for a while, 
but it tends to error out when it's downloading a file that isn't already 
mirrored. Re-issuing the apt-get command seems to work okay.

Basically, you set up apt-proxy on your mirror machine, configuring it to 
look for packages for a given distribution (like non-US) on one or more 
mirrors.  You then point every local machine's sources.list at the mirror 
machine (with a specific port and http protocol), and it downloads the 
files for all the other machines, building a partial mirror as it goes.

Pretty cool, but it's been hard for me to get working, and seems to take 
quite a while to work...  YMMV.

On Thursday 05 July 2001 02:45 am, dim wrote:
> Hello All!
>
> >> > How about the opposite extreme of a release DVD: A release-
> >> > agnostic CD that runs right off the CD, lets you enter a
> >> > distrib mirror site and your chosen distrib and then runs a
> >> > network-based install of stable, testing or unstable straight
> >> > off the net (via ramdisk perhaps).
>
> And more to it:
>     For install to several computers lets automaticly make scripts for
>     mirroring _choosed_ packages. Then mirror it and then install from
>     this local mirror to any amount of computers.
>
> little_offtopic
> {
>     BTW, somebody made scripts/programs for partial mirroring based on
>     packages selecting?
>     This will be _very_ helpfull for organizations where it's need to
>     periodically upgrade fixed set of the packages on many computers.
>     Main task is a program for such selecting with dependency
>     checking.
>
>     May be there is an apt program that can generate such lists?
> }