I set up a lot of machines and virtual machines using Debian, Linux Mint (Ubuntu), and rarely any other distribution.

Since bandwidth from my ISP is limited (they charge per block of GB transferred in a month) I thought I'd investigate the possibility of setting up a proxy on my server.

The idea being that since I install Debian a lot, it would be handy to have a cache of the files used regularly. An on-the-fly mirror if you will - it only downloads what is requested rather than mirroring the entire mirror. Like a web-caching proxy, but only for distribution files (ie only for apt/aptitude/apt-get).

I came across this on my searches which seems like what I'm wanting to do but it is A) based on CentOs, and B) too complicated for me to get working on a Debian/Ubuntu system:

http://www.perlmonks.org/?node_id=684293

Any ideas/help greatly appreciated.

Setting up a Debian archive mirror
https://www.debian.org/mirror/ftpmirror

Might help..

Thanks but that would require me downloading a ton of stuff I don't need, using more bandwidth than I'm trying to save!

I am currently reading about apt-cacher which looks like it suits my needs, still reading though...

I would just share /var/cache/apt/ over NFS from one machine. This way if any machine downloads a deb all other machines can use it.

well it did show
Partial mirroring.
or like you're seemingly looking into a means to just save whatever it was you installed on your system somewhere else. the install deb's it took to install whatever it was you installed?

why not try setting up a script you run or set it up to run every time you install something to copy over your cache to a different hdd , perhaps via into a different pc. so every time you install something run the script it copies it over to your holding place.

or on the receiving end have it setup in a OS to run and check your cache and get whatever new stuff you've downloaded into your cache. then suck it over into a holding spot on that pc.

that's if Debian keeps everything you download to install into a cache dir. it should not be that much to do, if you're using your system to get your debs from. not even a server set up even. just a user setup cron job with access to ssh or whatever means you want to get into a local network to get it over to your main system.

gain root access to your deban/ cache and check for dups, all no dups are then copied over to it into your holding directory on the other system.

something like that. this way no bandwidth is being used from your Provider.