apt-proxy(8)

apt-proxy8

A proxy for saving bandwidth to debian servers

Usage

apt-proxy [options] [logfile]

Overview

apt-proxy is a python program designed to be run as an stand alone server via twistd, and provides a clean, caching, intelligent proxy for apt-get, which speaks HTTP to apt-get clients, and http, ftp or rsync to the backend server(s). apt-proxy listens by default on port 9999.

-h, --help

Display usage information.

-c, --config-file=

Configuration file. This defaults to /etc/apt-proxy/apt-proxy-v2.conf

Client configuration

Once apt-proxy is configured on a host SERVER, users then edit their sources.list file to point to the proxy (which uses the http protocol to serve clients), like so:

deb http://SERVER:9999/debian stable main contrib non-free
deb-src http://SERVER:9999/debian stable main contrib non-free
deb http://aptproxy:9999/security stable/updates main contrib non-free

What path should be specified after the server name and port number depends on the configuration of apt-proxy (which can restrict paths and send different paths to different servers). See SERVER CONFIGURATION below.

Note that you can also use the nicknames `unstable', `frozen' etc, but Packages/Sources files may get duplicated, so it is best to use either the symbolic or the code name and stick with it.

Server configuration

See apt-proxy.conf(5) for details of how to set up apt-proxy to use backends near to you.

Care and feeding of mirrors

apt-proxy reduces the bandwidth requirements of Debian mirrors by restricting the frequency of Packages, Releases and Sources file updates from the back end and only doing a single fetch for any file, how ever many users request it from the proxy.

Files

/etc/apt-proxy/apt-proxy.conf or /etc/apt-proxy/apt-proxy-v2.conf

Releases

4 releases since Debian 3.0 (Woody); the text changed 2 times.

  1. 3.0
  2. 3.1
  3. 4.0–5.0

--help since Debian 4.0 (Etch); -h since Debian 4.0 (Etch).

--version until Debian 3.0 (Woody); -c until Debian 3.0 (Woody); -l until Debian 3.0 (Woody); -v until Debian 3.0 (Woody).

Bugs

Packages are not compressed using gzip --rsyncable, which gives a 30% reduction in bytes transferred for binary packages, and much greater for source and other packages.

Authors

apt-proxy v2 was written by Manuel Estrada Sainz and is maintained by Otavio Salvador and Chris Halls.

From apt-proxy 1.9.36.3+nmu1 in Debian 5.0 (Lenny). Parsed by carta from the page's man source.