[ubuntu-uk] Peer to peer apt

John Stevenson john at jr0cket.com
Fri May 14 14:58:34 BST 2010


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
>
I am happy just using a local cache or sharing my /var/cache/apt/archives
directory on my NAS box at home when there is a new release.  A few symbolic
links and I only ever download a package once.

With the large amount of mirror sites available, especially in the UK so I
dont feel the need personally to do P2P, but its an interesting idea.

You would need to be careful about the allowed upload bandwidth, as this can
adversly affect your internet download speed

-- 
John Stevenson
jr0cket.com
leanagilemachine.com
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