[GLLUG] Personal APT Debs cache

[Brian Hoort]

I have multiple Debian boxes at home with a phone line connection to the 
Internet.  Downloading updated .debs for each box seems retarded.  I 
glanced through a few books I have (Running Linux, Linux Administration 
Handbook) and a few at the book store, and only one mentions doing this, 
LAH.  However, it just mentions doing it and suggests that I can do it with 
a HTTP share, and point the clients to it with the apt-sources.list, or 
share it with NFS, without getting into the guts of doing so?  Have any of 
you done this?

My main thoughts are:

1. Ideally, each box should be able to download and add a deb to the cache 
if it isn't there.  I think this excludes using HTTP, and necessitates the 
NFS solution.

1a. Will I run into trouble if I have multiple boxes hitting the NFS Deb 
cache simultaneously with RW access?

2. Alternatively, I could share it HTTP, and only have one box have write 
perms to it.  But then I'd have to "apt-get install foo --download-only" or 
whatever on the deb server box first before doing the real "apt-get install 
foo" on the client box.  Doable, but a pain.  Could that be scripted easily 
by a newbie like myself?

3. Are there other groovy possibilities I'm missing?

Thanks, oh wise Debian Deities (Daemons?).

-- 
Brian Hoort