elMeu blog

Doing a debian mirror repository with hand and some bash

This week i have needed to do one debian local repository for build - i satarted and i hope finally this month - a network of small computers run remote X sessions with XDMCP protocol to centralized server, and i was have a big problem, the place have not any connection to internet for retrive the debian packages.

I had the possibility to retrieve full debian DVDs, but i had think it's more likeable try to make a local debian repository in my laptop, and add my laptop to the netwok with configure all computers because retrieve all packets from my local repository.

Make a local repository, it's easy but little heavy for your network connection because the finally size is about 15 Gbytes ... only unstable release !
First your need create the basical structure, based in some directeor and some files.

root@hidrogen:/var/www# mkdir -p debian/dists/testing/contrib/binary-i386
root@hidrogen:/var/www# mkdir -p debian/dists/testing/non-free/binary-i386
root@hidrogen:/var/www# mkdir -p debian/dists/testing/main/binary-i386

Next retrive some metadata files for description you architecture, release, security and others parameters of repository

root@hidrogen:/var/www/debian/dists/testing# wget http://ftp.fr.debian.org/debian/dists/testing/Contents-i386.gz
root@hidrogen:/var/www/debian/dists/testing# wget http://ftp.fr.debian.org/debian/dists/testing/Release
root@hidrogen:/var/www/debian/dists/testing# wget http://ftp.fr.debian.org/debian/dists/testing/Release.gpg

Do the same for Packages.tar.gz and Release files for contrib, main, non-free directorys into binary-i386 sub direcotry.

And finaly launch a ease basch script for retrive all packages for contrib, main, non-free directorys

for file in `gunzip -c Packages.gz | grep Filename | cut -d" " -f2`;
do
if [ ! -e "ftp.fr.debian.org/debian/$file" ];
then wget -x http://ftp.fr.debian.org/debian/$file;
else
echo "$file exists";
fi;
done

Repeat this script for three kind of packages and put these output into pool directory

root@hidrogen:/var/www# mkdir -p debian/pool

root@hidrogen:/var/www/debian/pool# mv dists/testing/main/binary-i386/ftp.fr.debian.org/debian/pool/main .

root@hidrogen:/var/www/debian/pool#mv dists/testing/contrib/binary-i386/ftp.fr.debian.org/debian/pool/contrib .

root@hidrogen:/var/www/debian/pool#mv dists/testing/contrib/binary-i386/ftp.fr.debian.org/debian/pool/non-free .

And finally add this new directory into your apache default configuration ...