apt-proxy Sarge and Ubuntu at the same time?

[Raphaël Berbain]

* Bengt Thuree:

> I have my fileserver and some other servers running Debian/Sarge, while
> my workstation and MythTV is running Ubuntu.
>
> I would like to use APT-PROXY on one computer so I do not have to
> download everything more than once.
>
> It worked fine with apt-proxy V1, although I found that Ubuntu and
> Debian repositories did not work well together in apt-proxy, so I ended
> up having two separate repositories as well as port numbers. One (9999)
> for Debian, and another (9998) for Ubuntu.
>
> Now, they have released apt-proxy V2, and I do not know how to enable
> two processes running and listening on two different ports at the same
> time. I have not found anyway to launch apt-proxyV2 with a specific
> configuration file.
>
> Does anyone else use Apt-proxy, and in particular with both Debian and
> Ubuntu. How have you solved it?

Here is my apt-proxy experience:  I used apt-proxy v1/Debian only,
v2/Debian only, v2/Debian+Ubuntu, v2/Ubuntu only.  I haven't had any
issues serving Debian and Ubuntu repositories at the same time.  Could
you be more specific on the 'did not work well together' part ?  I
have seen problems, especially during apt-proxy v2 infancy, but
nothing relating to mixing Debian & Ubuntu repositories.

As you might have understood, I don't believe having 2 apt-proxy
instances is the right way to go - It should be possible to have one
handle both distributions.

If you really want to have two seperate instances:  A very quick
glance at the source seems to indicate that the port apt-proxy binds
to can only be set through the config file, so you'd need to specify
different config files to both instances.  The config file path, in
turn, is hard-coded[1].  So short of hacking the source, you are out
of luck.

On a related note, I am also looking forward to approx[2] to enter
Ubuntu - I believe it entered Debian just after Hoary branched.  I
have seen very good results with it, both with Debian/Ubuntu and
Ubuntu only.

Footnotes: 
[1] see /usr/lib/python2.4/site-packages/apt_proxy/apt_proxy_conf.py,
    around line 74.

[2] http://packages.debian.org/unstable/admin/approx
    http://www-2.cs.cmu.edu/~ecc/software.html