At work, for business needs, we decided it would have been better to adopt a local debian mirror.
After some search, I choosen total flexibility, by adopting the anonftpsync shell script. It is a self-descriptive-log-and-mail kind of script. Just customize and use it. Here for convenience I’m gonna post the one I used (it’s just commented, there are some parts that need to be uncommented out):
#! /bin/sh set -e
# This script originates from http://www.debian.org/mirror/anonftpsync
# modified by Andrea Matesi
# CVS: cvs.debian.org:/cvs/webwml - webwml/english/mirror/anonftpsync
# Version: $Id: anonftpsync,v 1.30 2007/09/06 18:05:44 joy Exp $
# Note: You MUST have rsync 2.6.4 or newer, which is available in sarge
# and all newer Debian releases, or at http://rsync.samba.org/
# Don't forget:
# chmod u+x anonftpsync
# Set the variables below to fit your site. You can then use cron to have
# this script run daily to automatically update your copy of the archive.
# TO is the destination for the base of the Debian mirror directory
# (the dir that holds dists/ and ls-lR).
# (mandatory) TO=/mnt/backup/mirror
# RSYNC_HOST is the site you have chosen from the mirrors file.
# (http://www.debian.org/mirror/list-full)
# (mandatory) RSYNC_HOST=debian.fastweb.it
# RSYNC_DIR is the directory given in the "Packages over rsync:" line of
# the mirrors file for the site you have chosen to mirror.
# (mandatory) RSYNC_DIR=debian/
# LOGDIR is the directory where the logs will be written to
# (mandatory) LOGDIR=/var/log
# ARCH_EXCLUDE can be used to exclude a complete architecture from
# mirrorring. Please use as space seperated list.
# Possible values are:
# alpha, amd64, arm, hppa, hurd-i386, i386, ia64, m68k, mipsel, mips, powerpc, s390, sh and sparc
#
# There is one special value: source
# This is not an architecture but will exclude all source code in /pool
#
# eg. ARCH_EXCLUDE="alpha amd64 arm hppa hurd-i386 ia64 m68k mipsel mips powerpc s390 sh sparc"
#
# With a blank ARCH_EXCLUDE you will mirror all available architectures
# (optional) #ARCH_EXCLUDE=
# EXCLUDE is a list of parameters listing patterns that rsync will exclude, in
# addition to the architectures excluded by ARCH_EXCLUDE.
#
# Use ARCH_EXCLUDE to exclude specific architectures or all sources
#
# --exclude stable, testing, unstable options DON'T remove the packages of
# the given distribution. If you want do so, use debmirror instead.
#
# The following example would exclude mostly everything: EXCLUDE="\ --exclude stable/ --exclude testing/
--exclude unstable/ \ --exclude source/ \ --exclude *.orig.tar.gz --exclude *.diff.gz --exclude *.dsc
\ --exclude /contrib/ --exclude /non-free/ \ "
# With a blank EXCLUDE you will mirror the entire archive, except the
# architectures excluded by ARCH_EXCLUDE.
# (optional) #EXCLUDE=
# MAILTO is the address to send logfiles to;
# if it is not defined, no mail will be sent
# (optional) MAILTO=myself@mywork-co.it
# There should be no need to edit anything below this point, unless there
# are problems.
#-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
#
# If you are accessing a rsync server/module which is password-protected,
# uncomment the following lines (and edit the other file).
# . ftpsync.conf
# export RSYNC_PASSWORD
# RSYNC_HOST=$RSYNC_USER@$RSYNC_HOST
#-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
#
# Check for some environment variables if [ -z $TO ] || [ -z $RSYNC_HOST ] || [ -z $RSYNC_DIR ] || [ -z $LOGDIR ];
then echo "One of the following variables seems to be empty:" echo "TO, RSYNC_HOST, RSYNC_DIR or LOGDIR" exit 2 fi
if ! [ -d ${TO}/project/trace/ ]; then
# we are running mirror script for the first time umask 002 mkdir -p ${TO}/project/trace fi
# Note: on some non-Debian systems, hostname doesn't accept -f option.
# If that's the case on your system, make sure hostname prints the full
# hostname, and remove the -f option. If there's no hostname command,
# explicitly replace `hostname -f` with the hostname. HOSTNAME=`hostname`
# The hostname must match the "Site" field written in the list of mirrors.
# If hostname doesn't returns the correct value, fill and uncomment below
# HOSTNAME=mirror.domain.tld LOCK="${TO}/Archive-Update-in-Progress-${HOSTNAME}"
# The temp directory used by rsync --delay-updates is not
# world-readable remotely. It must be excluded to avoid errors. TMP_EXCLUDE="--exclude .~tmp~/"
# Exclude architectures defined in $ARCH_EXCLUDE for ARCH in $ARCH_EXCLUDE; do EXCLUDE=$EXCLUDE"\ --exclude binary-$ARCH/
\ --exclude disks-$ARCH/ \ --exclude installer-$ARCH/ \ --exclude Contents-$ARCH.gz \ --exclude Contents-$ARCH.diff/
\ --exclude *_$ARCH.deb \ --exclude *_$ARCH.udeb " if [ "$ARCH" == "source" ]; then SOURCE_EXCLUDE="\ --exclude *.tar.gz
\ --exclude *.diff.gz \ --exclude *.dsc " fi done
# Logfile LOGFILE=$LOGDIR/debian-mirror.log
# Get in the right directory and set the umask to be group writable
# cd $HOME umask 002
# Check to see if another sync is in progress if [ -f "$LOCK" ]; then if [ "`find $LOCK -maxdepth 1 -amin -360`" = "" ]; then
# Note: this requires the procps ps; for other ps', adjust as necessary if ps ax | grep '[r]'sync | grep -q $RSYNC_HOST;
then echo "stale lock found, but a rsync is still running, aiee!" exit 1
else echo "stale lock found (not accessed in the last 6 hours), forcing update!" rm -f $LOCK fi
else echo "current lock file exists, unable to start rsync!" exit 1 fi fi touch $LOCK
# Note: on some non-Debian systems, trap doesn't accept "exit" as signal # specification.
If that's the case on your system, try using "0". trap "rm -f $LOCK" exit set +e
# First sync /pool rsync --recursive --links --hard-links --times --verbose \ $TMP_EXCLUDE $EXCLUDE $SOURCE_EXCLUDE \
$RSYNC_HOST::$RSYNC_DIR/pool/ $TO/pool/ >> $LOGFILE 2>&1 result=$? if [ 0 = $result ]; then
# Now sync the remaining stuff rsync --recursive --links --hard-links --times --verbose --delay-updates --delete-after \
--exclude "Archive-Update-in-Progress-${HOSTNAME}" \ --exclude "project/trace/${HOSTNAME}"
\ $TMP_EXCLUDE $EXCLUDE $SOURCE_EXCLUDE \ $RSYNC_HOST::$RSYNC_DIR $TO >> $LOGFILE 2>&1 LANG=C
date -u > "${TO}/project/trace/${HOSTNAME}" else echo "ERROR: Help, something weird happened" | tee -a $LOGFILE
echo "mirroring /pool exited with exitcode" $result | tee -a $LOGFILE fi if ! [ -z $MAILTO ];
then mail -s "debian archive synced" $MAILTO < $LOGFILE fi savelog $LOGFILE >/dev/null rm $LOCK
I’ve put this script auto-executing inside crontab, then I configured apache http for the file-serving purpose at a different standard name. When I had to manually install a debian distribution, I pointed the installer to grab deb packages from this http server and everything worked as expected, but especially, it was fast, since it was inside our lan.
