Lucid: /var/cache/apt/archives problem...

[casperl]

A few releases ago things used to work this way, but seemingly since Jaunty it no longer does seem to work:

This used to work: I have several Ubuntu machines to upgrade and limited (and highly expensive) bandwidth available. In the past I would upgrade/update one machine and copy the contents of /var/cache/apt/archives to the other machines to be upgraded. When updating/upgrading the distro the packages that already exist in /var/cache/apt/archives would not be downloaded from the Internet while utilising the locally cached .deb files, saving time and bandwidth.

The Problem: I have noticed that since 9.10 (and with 10.04) this no longer appears to work. While the .deb packages may exist in /var/cache/apt/archives, the same packages would be downloaded from the Internet regardless of the same .deb file existing in /var/cache/apt/archives/.

Question: What is wrong and how can I restore the functionality present in copying cached packages from machine to machine in order to save bandwidth?

Why I need this to work: At work (and I have no control over this...) we are limited to a total bandwidth of 3Gb per month for multiple users. Needless to say a single upgrade of a recent Ubuntu distro can decimate a large proportion of our monthly available bandwidth. Upgrading multiple machines is absolutely out of the question if the packages have to be downloaded every time.

An apt-cache server is not an option: The option of a local apt-cache server is not feasible due to the same 3Gb bandwidth constraint. An apt-cache server requires 15Gb storage per version of Ubuntu and the downloading/upgrading of 15Gb worth of packages for that storage is not an option due to the 3Gb limitation.

Thanks in advance

[Ashocka]

See if this reply helps you
http://ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php?p=9320942&postcount=2

I haven't tried it on a ubuntu upgrade. When I tried it on Linux Mint it (Synaptic) is configured different so I couldn't apply this.

[casperl]

I have not been able to test this (yet) but will do so soon.

I have added this line to /etc/apt/sources.list

## local cache folder
deb file:///var/cache/apt/archives lucid main restricted lucid-security universe multiverse

I will update this thread with the results.

[casperl]

> See if this reply helps you
> http://ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php...42&postcount=2

The above fix involves:

Copy the .debs to /var/cache/apt/archives.
Go to System -> Administration -> Synaptic Package Manager
click the 'origin' button in the bottom left.
click local.

I have done so and a list of "local" packages appear in synaptic. However this list contains considerable fewer packages than the number of files in /var/cache/apt/archives (about 20% of the list).

The file permissions of all the debs in archives is set to "-rw-r--r--" and the ownership as root | root.

However, "lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 14 2010-03-13 11:53 archives -> /home/archives" is a symlink pointing to a separate, mounted partition so that I can copy debs before the upgrade / clean install. Might this have something to do with the problem?