Cannot import packages from debian iso to apt-cacher-ng
I installed a 32 bit Debian Wheezy on a PC (One PC in a lab of 24 computers).
I made it a dhcp PXE server with netboot images of Debian 7 32 bits.
It worked perfectly and all the 20 computers booted from network with
the debian installer.
The only problem was that all the packages had to be retrieved from
the internet and bandwidth was a problem. So only one computer could
be properly installed.
So I tried to look for solutions on how to completely boot the 4.3 GB
iso from the network, bypassing the internet mirrors completely. I
asked a question on the debian user lists and was greeted with many
solutions, among them was the apt-cacher-ng.
So now I wanted to install 64 bit machines on the same lab, and the 32
bit server being the PXE server.
So I installed the apt-cacher-ng package. All was set up.
I mounted my iso file to a location, and created a symlink of the
/pool folder to /var/cache/apt-cacher-ng/_import folder.
Next I went to localhost:3142/acng-report.html and ran import and it
gave me the following error:
Maintenance task (File Import), apt-cacher-ng version: 0.7.11 (Cancel)
Importing from /var/cache/apt-cacher-ng/_import directory.
Scanning local files...
Scanning, found 1 file...
Scanning, found 2 files...
Scanning, found 4 files...
Scanning, found 8 files...
Scanning, found 16 files...
Scanning, found 32 files...
Scanning, found 64 files...
Scanning, found 128 files...
Scanning, found 256 files...
Scanning, found 512 files...
Scanning, found 1024 files...
Scanning, found 2048 files...
No index files detected. Unable to continue, cannot map files to
internal locations.
So I went ahead and tried to grasp the HOWTO for importing from iso,
and it mentioned that you need to run apt-get update before importing
the packages.
Now since I wanted to cache all the 64 bits packages from the iso, I
tweaked my sources.list to point to iso (The hyperlink is a method
given by me on how to use iso's as apt-get repository).
Now when I ran apt-get update it gave me an error that no i386
packages found (made sense since I was running it on 32 bits server,
and looking for amd64 packages).
So as a test, I installed apt-cacher-ng on my laptop running 64 bits
debian, and it gave me the same index error.
I even tried manually copying *deb packages from
/var/cache/apt/archives to /var/cache/apt-cacher-ng/_import folder,
but again same error!
I also tried importing packages from official repositories and again it failed.
I am no champion of linux, nor of networking. I am just a student,
trying to learn linux as much as he can, by asking his college to
shift from windows to linux, and in the process learning the
fundamentals of networking and linux.
Any ideas?
--
Regards,
Anubhav Yadav
Imperial College of Engineering and Research,
Pune.
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