G'day all, a few questions

[Martin Maney]

On Fri, Oct 01, 2004 at 01:08:12PM +1000, David wrote:
> this sounds like a bad idea... I'm doing a test install right now, but if
> it works out well Ubuntu will go on at least two other machines.
> 
> that's lots of wasted bandwidth. Surely there should be an option - delete
> or not. On modern systems disc space is not an issue.

If you have a web proxy ready to hand (or a box you can setup, say,
squid on), then passing http_proxy=... as a kernel option at boot will
get the installation to use the proxy.  You'll probably wish to
increase the cache's maximum file size, since not caching, say, OOo can
waste a boatload of badwidth.

If I wind up with more than one or two Ubuntu boxes I'll want to look
into apt-proxy - it has the advantage of caching by package name and
version and not caring about which mirror you were using when you
fetched something.  But as long as there's only one hostname that can
go inthe URL a siple web cache works fine.

Just don't forget to set it in /etc/apt.conf after the install to keep
updates flowing through the cache. :-/

-- 
Although we may never know with complete certainty the identity
of the winner of this year's presidential election, the identity
of the loser is perfectly clear.  It is the nation's confidence
in the judge as an impartial guardian of the law.
 - Justice John Paul Stevens, from his dissenting opinion Dec 12, 2000