On Wednesday 05 January 2005 13:43, David T-G wrote: <snip> > ...and then Alexandros Papadopoulos said... <snip> > % Although I've found apt-cacher to be more practical for the task of > % installing a small number of machines with more or less similar > % configuration. It just makes sure that you only download each > package % once, on a on-demand basis. > > Oooh! That sounds awesome! I'll have to check it out. > > Unfortunately I bet that it requires a Debian system on which to run, > right? :-/
Correct - but any packages downloaded to install the Debian cache can be added right back to the cache for use by the next client. From apt-cacher(1): [...]Apt-cacher now comes with an import helper script to make things easier. Just put a bunch of .debs into /var/cache/apt-cacher/import (or a directory called 'import' inside whatever you've set your cache dir to be, and run /usr/share/apt-cacher/apt-cacher-import.pl. The script will run through all the .debs it finds in that dir and set them up for you in the cache. Hence, nothing is downloaded twice. -A