How TO: Custom repo (local or remote)

[cdk]

Hya m8s!
i searched around the forum looking for some info on how to create my own repo and i came up with nothing so i decided to research it and come up with a really easy way to do it and here is what i have found.

HOWTO: Custom repo (local or remote)

REQ: In order to use this how to you will need several things
dpkg-dev
local/remote dir for repo
some .deb files to test
spare time!

** I will be assuming you are going to use a local repo but if you want to use one for your network then all you need to do is create the repo dir in /var/www and follow the same steps

Step One
Most systems come with the following files but just ot be safe run these

sudo apt-get install apt-utils
sudo apt-get install dpkg-dev

If you havent created your repo directory do it now (i made mine in /var/www because i use apache)

mkdir /home/your repo dir/

Step Two
Now we are going to fill our repo with some .debs (if you are making this repo then you should have some you want to install)

Step Three
We are going to create a script that will make the .debs apt-get'able

cd /bin/
sudo nano autorepo

Enter the following lines into autorepo

#!/bin/bash
sudo dpkg-scanpackages . /dev/null | gzip -9c > Packages.gz
sudo dpkg-scansources . /dev/null | gzip -9c > Sources.gz

Save the file. Now we have to make it executable

sudo chmod +x autorepo

Step Four
We are going to create our repo packages.gz and sources.gz

cd /home/your repo name/
autorepo

you should get some output and be able to see 2 new files in the dir. If you placed the .debs in the repo and they are good packages you shouldnt see any errors if you do get some errors its okay just continue on to the next step to verify if the script works. You can also run this script manually too.

Step Five
Time to update your sources.list

sudo nano /etc/apt/sources.list

add the following to the bottom of the list

##My Repo
deb file:///path/to/repository/ reponame/

example:
deb file:///home/ repo/

and for remote:
deb http://host name or ip/ repo/

Its important to remeber that you need to add your repo dir with a space and then "/" otherwise apt will not beable to read the files correctly.

Lets test it out now fire up synaptic and do a repo update now search for the names of the .debs you have in your repo with any luck they will be there.

If you have any further questions PM me or reply here! I hope this helps somebody!

cheers,
CDK

[spacemonkey]

Is there anyway to automatically add to the repo all the .deb's you've got installed on your system? To create a sortof quick system restore?

[cdk]

sounds interesting. im not sure how to go about it though. if you could some how output the list of packages installed on your system and then mirrior them to your repo it might work. any one else have some ideas?

[angrykeyboarder]

" Wrote 251 entries to output Packages file.
Prototype mismatch: sub main::getopt: none vs (@) at /usr/bin/dpkg-scansources line 116."

[cdk]

i have seen that error many times. Im no expert at this but i did exactly what i wrote above on a minimal ubuntu server and everything works. i just added some new packages to my repo to day and installed it on my workstation with no problems. Maybe someone here will know how to fix that error. In my experience i could still install from my repo even when i got that error.

cheers,

[angrykeyboarder]

i have seen that error many times. Im no expert at this but i did exactly what i wrote above on a minimal ubuntu server and everything works. i just added some new packages to my repo to day and installed it on my workstation with no problems. Maybe someone here will know how to fix that error. In my experience i could still install from my repo even when i got that error.

cheers,

I was seemingly able to install from my repo as well. But I'd still like to know what the error was about.

Does anyone have any ideas?

[AndyAWS]

It appears that the error is caused by the scansources line in the script. I commented that line and the error went away.

My guess would be that if you don't have any sources for it to scan it kicks out the prototype mismatch.

[aveline]

It appears that the error is caused by the scansources line in the script. I commented that line and the error went away.

My guess would be that if you don't have any sources for it to scan it kicks out the prototype mismatch.

dumb Q: why would you want to do this?

aveline

[AndyAWS]

If you had source files in your local repo you would want to scan for them so that you could use apt-get to build and install them...probably nothing that the average user would need to do.

[ArthurHeng]

This guide simply rocks! Thanks a lot man!