mirroring just binary-i386 files

[Daniel Barclay <dsb@smart.net>]

Is there a way to mirror just the Debian package files needed for 
a given architecture?  

That is, given the pool directories and all the symbolic links 
to them, is there any way to mirror just the section under 
/debian/dists/potato and just the files needed for binary-i386?


I'm currently using mirror, but run into a series of problems:


- If I don't flatten or suppress the symbolic links, it seems I'd have 
to mirror the whole pool in order to have the pool files to which 
the symbolic links under /debian/dists/potato refer.  I don't have 
space for that.

Thereore, I configured mirror to flatten symbolic links (download the 
linked file instead of creating a link locally).  

- I got a lot of duplicate .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 either.

Since I thought everything the binary-all directories was linked
to from the binary-i386 directory, I mirrored just the binary-i386 
directories (with links flattened).

- Unfortunately, the Packages file refers to the binary-all 
directories.

To solve that, I created a "binary-all" symbolic link to each 
"binary-i386" directory.

- Unfortunately, it turns out that not everything listed in binary-all
is also listed in binary-i386 on the server.

** Is that intentional or an error?  For example, 
ftp://ftp.debian.org/debian/dists/potato/main/binary-i386/doc/
does not list glibc-doc..., although that file is in 
ftp://ftp.debian.org/debian/dists/potato/main/binary-all/doc/ .




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 )