Comments on: approx: Package caching for Ubuntu (and Debian) lovers

By: Gerhard Mack

Gerhard Mack — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 09:50:07 +0000

apt-proxy is buggy and unmaintained so pretty much anything else wins out.

By: James

James — Thu, 07 May 2009 14:01:42 +0000

Duncan: update-manager does some extra things beyond a plain dist-upgrade - the source is python if you want to read what it does and attempt it by hand.

By: Duncan

Duncan — Thu, 07 May 2009 10:56:41 +0000

Hi,
I’ve been using approx for a while now to feed a few debian and ubuntu installs with no problems except….

Doing an dist upgrade on ubuntu, if you use the “suggested” tools, third party sources are automatically disabled and the upgrade uses the ubuntu repos. Is there a way to force ubuntu to use the local repo for dist upgrade?

Or alternatively, is it safe to do a command line dist-upgrade on ubuntu (i.e. not use the upgrade tool) and just manually update the sources list as I would on debian?

By: James

James — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 10:38:14 +0000

apt-zeroconf doesn’t need fucking around with your sources.list and works OK, although it’s a bit unmaintained and needs restarting occasionally.

By: ken

ken — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 08:05:16 +0000

You can do something with the file /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/01proxy to instruct apt to use the cache rather than change your sources.list. Then if you’re out on the road, you can change 01proxy back to use the real servers rather than the proxy.

By: Jeff Waugh

Jeff Waugh — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 01:07:30 +0000

@Olivier: I’ve found approx to be extraordinarily reliable, certainly moreso than apt-proxy. It does have a special place in my heart, though, being the very first Twisted app I ever used.

I might have to give apt-cacher-ng another try, given the positive comments above. Thanks!

By: Jones Lee

Jones Lee — Sun, 12 Apr 2009 23:03:23 +0000

Indeed it is not possible to process multi-requests with approx. Thus to upgrade or deploy softwares on a massive scale of network is not possible. Then again, apt-cacher-ng comes in to save the day.

By: Jerome Haltom

Jerome Haltom — Sun, 12 Apr 2009 22:12:28 +0000

Odd. I always just used Squid.

By: Olivier

Olivier — Sun, 12 Apr 2009 20:20:16 +0000

What are the avantages of approx over apt-proxy? is it worth migrating?

By: Julian

Julian — Sun, 12 Apr 2009 20:02:06 +0000

But there is one very big problem with approx (and apt-cache): It does not allow parallel requests so when two clients try to update at the same time, one has to wait.

I’m using apt-cacher-ng instead which does pretty much the same and is easier to use: Just install it on one host and configure this as your apt proxy. You neither need to write any configuration files for it nor change the sources.list file.