mirroring ftp://ftp.debian.org/debian/dists/potato

[Daniel Barclay <dsb@smart.net>]

Given all the symbolic links to pool directories on the FTP
servers, is there any way to mirror just the section under 
/debian/dists/potato?


Using mirror, if I don't flatten/suppress/whatever the symbolic
links, it seems I'd have to mirror the whole pool in order to have 
all the files to which the symbolic links user /debian/dists/potato 
refer.  I don't have space for that.

If I do flatten symbolic links, then I get a lot of duplicates 
.deb files because I've flattened the links from 
/debian/dists/potato/.../binary-i386 to 
/debian/dists/potato/.../binary-all.  I don't really have the 
space for that.

If I mirror just the binary-i386 directories (with links flattened), 
I'd have enough space, but the Packages file refers to the binary-all 
directories.

I suppose I could create a binary-all symbolic link to each 
binary-i386 directory, but I'm looking for a better solution.


Does rsync give better control over link expansion than mirror?
(E.g., for any link under /debian/dists/potato to a file not under
/debian/dists/potato, expand the link (as a file under 
/debian/dists/potato); but for links within the subtree rooted 
at /debian/dists/potato, preserve them.)


Does some form of apt support permanently mirroring a distribution?
(Permanently as opposed to whichever cache it is that apt asks if
you want to purge?)


(I want to maintain a local mirror so that when I want to install
something, it's already downloaded and I can install it quickly.)


Thanks,
Daniel
-- 
Daniel Barclay
dsb@smart.net
(Hmm.  A little worrisome:  http://www.junkbusters.com/cgi-bin/privacy
                            http://www.anonymizer.com/snoop.cgi )