I am in the process of installing debian on a number of machines (15 to start with) if it is successfull then I will possibly use more machines (up to potentialy 30+) in my network.

One thing I'm aware of is that updating/installing new software (something that can be done using ssh or other means) could be a big drain on the 2 meg ADSL that we use.

I have looked briefly at the apt mirror project, The only thing is I'm not sure if it is the best solution as it may entail mirroring 20+ GB more than i will ever use.

I have had a suggestion about just using a web cache on a proxy puerly for my apt but I'm at the moment not sure how to set this up.

What do the gurus here at LQ think is the best solution? what have you used at home/work?

also are there any guides/books that may help me in this task, and the whole setting up Debian based clients on the network?

http://apt-proxy.sourceforge.net/

http://www.debian-administration.org/articles/338

I used it, it took me 10mn to set it up.

Hi

I had the same problem, additionally I don't have Debian only, but a bit of Ubuntu and unfortunately some old Fedora Legacy machines as well.

So I just set up a standard caching web-proxy - it wasn't hard at all - just did an
apt-get install polipo
on a machine with a bit of free disk-space.

There are tuning and configuration, but I didn't do any - the proxy is behind a firewall so I didn't bother.

Then I set up the other machines to use that proxy, and it's been working fine ever since.

Not using apt-proxy has the benefit of caching more - e.g. I donwload Sun's Java JRE and other stuff from the proxy at LAN speeds. The proxy can be used for regular surfing too if wanted.

But I guess apt-proxy is better suited if you want to cache deb files only.

Best Regards,
Guttorm.

Works a charm WOW what a difference it makes. Thats annotyher problem sorted