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Local package repository?
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Local package repository?

DamianDamian Member
edited December 2011 in General

Did a search on this, didn't come up with anything.

I'm considering implementing a local-network package repository for our users. They will then be able to update their OS at gigabit speed, which will also reduce load on our carrier connections. I haven't researched how large an average rsync session would be, if I set it to update every 24 hours or so. Or if it needs to be updated more often than daily.

I'll thinking covering Centos 5 & 6, Debian Stable & Testing, and Arch core, in both x86 and x86_64, would be a good start.

Users: would this be a good benefit for you?

Providers (if anyone else is implementing this): do you find it's worth the effort?

Comments

  • I was considering this myself also, just not sure the best way to go about it.
    24 hours seems a fine rsync period though.

    Subscribed. ;)

  • We're doing it for CentOS, definitely worth it from our point of view and every 24 hours is more than sufficient. Clients don't seem to care either way though (local or non local is fast).

    Thanked by 1Damian
  • InfinityInfinity Member, Host Rep
    edited December 2011

    Sounds like a pretty good idea. I've seen it before on some of my box's. I'd say go full speed ahead.

  • NickMNickM Member
    edited December 2011

    BuyVM is mirroring Debian and CentOS (and others, I believe) for its users. It's actually not that hard to set up a repo mirror - the Debian docs contain instructions for mirroring Debian, I believe, and I'm sure that CentOS and other distros have instructions somewhere too.

    Most users won't care either way, but anything that's good for the company as a whole (and reducing your bandwidth consumption company-wide is always good) is good for the end-user.

    From the provider perspective (I'm not a provider, but I can relate), it's definitely a benefit if you're actually able to get everyone to use your repo. This will mean re-rolling your templates to use your local mirror instead of the defaults and prominently advertising the fact that you've set up a local mirror to your customers, via email or however you widely advertise stuff to your customers.

  • vampireJvampireJ Member
    edited December 2011

    If with debian- I think what you want is apt-cache- though I haven't used it for at least 5 years. Basically you can point your repository to a local server running apt-cache and that one would pull updates for you. Great for a company setting as only one server would get all updates for your users.

  • FranciscoFrancisco Top Host, Host Rep, Veteran

    It's not hard but it eats a TON of space.

    We have a full 2TB drive assigned just to it and we're using ~1.4TB of it

    http://mirrors.buyvm.net for a full list of everything mirrored. For those curious, all outside connections are rate limited to 128KB/sec, all inside is uncapped gbit.

    Francisco

    Thanked by 1TigersWay
  • SpeedBusSpeedBus Member, Host Rep

    It's quiet easy, but as @Francisco said above, you'll need loads of storage if you rsync the whole repo, I rsync'd only the CentOS 6 Updates (32Bit Only) it came up to about 4 GB or so, Just the updates.

    It'll be good as you said as it will reduce external bandwidth usage and speedup updates and clear your network usage by some %.

  • I figured it would be a lot of disk space, but that gives me a good base number, thanks @Francisco !

    I was planning on building this out of a couple of consumer-grade 2 or 3 TB SATA hard drives in software RAID 1, since it's not going to be "high performance". I just wish we had planned this when hard drives were cheaper :)

  • I just wish we had planned this when hard drives were cheaper :)

    I'm with you there!

  • I've considered this a couple of times for out FreeBSD servers. Never got around to it.

    @ico7Chris said: I'm with you there!

    +1 on that. Went looking for another external this weekend. Yuck.

  • In Australia,
    Mass shops like Harvey Norman(Like best buy) are selling external drives for the price they were before the hard drive shortage

  • @karl said: Mass shops like Harvey Norman(Like best buy) are selling external drives for the price they were before the hard drive shortage

    Ours can't even get them in. The local Target has 1TB external (That's the plugin one) for $179 when I went this weekend.

  • InfinityInfinity Member, Host Rep
    edited December 2011

    I swear external drives are getting cheaper here in the UK, anways we've been overpriced for years. 'Bout time.

    But no special Christmas offers. Damnit.

  • Damn, thats crazy hopefully my shops don't catch on as i'm needing some more storage

  • ksx4systemksx4system Member
    edited December 2011

    @Damian4IPXcore

    If you're going to mirror Arch repos then you should mirror current Ubuntu Server repos too. Nice to know that you're going to mirror Debian.

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