[ubuntu-uk] Peer to peer apt

[Neil Greenwood]

On 14 May 2010 12:18, Samuel Toogood <sam_toogood at athsoc.org.uk> wrote:
> First post for a while, and I don't usually start threads, but I've been
> lurking, and I don't think this has appeared before.
>
> I recently had an idea for improving ubuntu: Wouldn't it be good if packages
> could be distributed in a peer to peer manner, as .isos can be? This would
> have several advantages, including:
> 1. If you have more than one ubuntu machine, no need to download everything
> multiple times, and no need to maintain an apt-mirror, it all just happens.
> 2. There are times, such as when a release first comes out, when the
> repositories get huge spikes in demand, this would help with that.
>
> The potential downside would be the threat of packages containing malware
> being propagated around, but this can be got around by checksumming etc.
>
> Like most of my ideas, it appears someone else got there first. There is a
> package in the repositories called apt-p2p which appears to be what I am
> talking about. Its homepage is at http://www.camrdale.org/apt-p2p/ . Has
> anyone used this? What do people think of the concept? Could it be
> integrated into the GUI for managing sources?
>
> Hope that makes sense.
>
> Sam
>

There are some packages in the Ubuntu repositories that already do
something like this. Look at:
squid-deb-proxy                                     - Squid proxy
configuration optimized for deb packages
squid-deb-proxy-client                              - Automatic proxy
discovery for apt based on avahi

They're available in universe on lucid (10.04).


HTH
Neil.