apt-cacher-ng howto

[davidshere]

I've seen several people moving from apt-cacher to apt-cacher-ng, and the claim that apt-cacher is no longer supported. Is this true?

I want to move my apt-cacher server from one machine to another, and I'm wondering if the directions for doing so are similar to your directions for switching from apt-cacher to apt-cacher-ng?

Also,

Setup the Client:
sudo gedit /etc/apt/apt-conf.d/02proxy
Put the following line in it:
Acquire::http { Proxy "http://192.168.1.100:3142"; };

Is this what's done in apt-cacher-ng on the clients instead of editing the /ect/apt/sources.list file to use your local URLs for the repository?

It seemes somewhat FreeBSD-needlessly-complicated to me. But maybe that's just cause I'm used to the apt-cacher way.

[SecretCode]

I can't answer your question on migration since I started with -ng. But what I can say is that I tried setting up a proxy (as you quoted) and it didn't work for me - I had to edit the URLs in sources.list.

If it worked I'd say setting a proxy is much simpler - you only have one place to change instead of having to copy it into every new repository / ppa you add.

[davidshere]

I had to edit the URLs in sources.list.

Here is a good single-line command for this, just change "thebone" to the name/ip of your machine. The command makes a backup first, sources.list.bak

sudo perl -i.bak -pe 's/http:\/\//http:\/\/thebone:3142\//g' /etc/apt/sources.list

[cong06]

I'm also looking for advice about apt-cacher vs apt-cacher-ng.

As far as the website is concerned it looks like apt-cacher is still supported:
http://packages.qa.debian.org/a/apt-cacher.html
last package upload ~ 2 months ago

While apt-cacher-ng does have a noticeable performance increase, the things I like about apt-cacher are:
1) It keeps one version of each package, and doesn't drop based on 'age'
2) It has command line commands for importing. I don't have to switch to a web interface.
3) The security.ubuntu.com and archive.ubuntu.com sometimes share packages. With apt-cacher-ng (as with apt-proxy) when you import you have to import to both trees. With apt-cacher it stores them all in a folder.

Although I'm looking forward to being persuaded that there are 'work-arounds' so that I can enjoy the speed increase.

[cong06]

I'm also looking for advice about apt-cacher vs apt-cacher-ng.

As far as the website is concerned it looks like apt-cacher is still supported:
http://packages.qa.debian.org/a/apt-cacher.html
last package upload ~ 2 months ago

While apt-cacher-ng does have a noticeable performance increase, the things I like about apt-cacher are:
1) It keeps one version of each package, and doesn't drop based on 'age'
2) It has command line commands for importing. I don't have to switch to a web interface.
3) The security.ubuntu.com and archive.ubuntu.com sometimes share packages. With apt-cacher-ng (as with apt-proxy) when you import you have to import to both trees. With apt-cacher it stores them all in a folder.

Although I'm looking forward to being persuaded that there are 'work-arounds' so that I can enjoy the speed increase.

Now using apt-cacher-ng:
1) works the same as apt-cacher
2) using elinks gives you a commandline program
3) if you mess around with backend files, you can move security.ubuntu.com to the uburep/ folder