SYNOPSIS

Server:

apt-cacher [-i|-d] [-c configfile ] [-p pidfile] [-r directory] [-R retries] [config_option=foo] [-h|--help]

Client:

http://apt-cacher.server:3142[/apt-cacher]/ [mirror] / [distribution]

DESCRIPTION

Apt-cacher is a caching proxy for Debian packages, allowing a number of computers to share a single cache. Packages requested from the cache only need to be downloaded from the Debian mirrors once, no matter how many local machines need to install them. This saves network bandwidth, improves performance for users, and reduces the load on the mirrors.

COMMAND-LINE OPTIONS

-d

Stand-alone daemon-mode. Fork and run in the background

-i

Inetd daemon-mode: Only use in /etc/inetd.conf

-c configfile

Specify alternative configuration file to default [/etc/apt-cacher/apt-cacher.conf]

-p pidfile

Write PID of running process to this file.

-r directory

Experimental option to chroot to given directory

-R retries

Number of attempts to bind to daemon port.

config_option=value

Override values in configuration file. Can be given multiple times.

-h, --help

Print brief usage.

USAGE

Setting up apt-cacher involves two stages: installing apt-cacher itself on a single machine on your network to act as a server and configuring all client machines to use the server's cache.

Apt-cacher can be installed to run either as a daemon [preferred] or as a CGI script on a web server such as Apache. When a client (apt-get(1), aptitude(8), synaptic(8) etc.) requests a package from the cache machine, the request is handled by apt-cacher which checks whether it already has that particular package. If so, the package is returned immediately to the client for installation. If not, or if the package in the local cache has been superseded by a more recent version, the package is fetched from the specified mirror. While being fetched it is simultaneously streamed to the client, and also saved to the local cache for future use.

Other client machines on your network do not need apt-cacher installed in order to use the server cache. The only modification on each client computer is to direct it to use the server cache. See CLIENT CONFIGURATION below for ways of doing this.

SERVER INSTALLATION

Apt-cacher can be installed in various ways on the server. The recommended way is by running the program as a daemon. This should give the best performance and the lowest overall memory usage.

Daemon Mode

Stand-alone Daemon:

Edit the file /etc/default/apt-cacher and change AUTOSTART=1, then run (as root)

/etc/init.d/apt-cacher start

to start the daemon.

Inetd Daemon:

Edit /etc/inetd.conf and add the line

3142 stream tcp nowait www-data /usr/sbinc/apt-cacher/apt-cacher apt-cacher -i

Restart or send SIGHUP to inetd after saving the file. This is a good method if you do not wish the daemon to be loaded all the time.

In either daemon mode, clients can access the server using http://apt-cacher.server:port/

NOTE: in inetd mode access control checks are not performed and the allowed_hosts and denied_hosts options have no effect. Access controls can be implemented using using inetd or tcpd wrapper. See README.Debian for further details.

CGI Mode

This is not recommended for long-term use because it brings a visible performance impact on the network and server speed. By default, apt-cacher package adds a default configuration profile to Apache. Clients can access the server using http://apt-cacher.server[:port]/apt-cacher/.

SERVER CONFIGURATION OPTIONS

Apt-cacher uses a configuration file for setting important options. Additionally there are few command line options to control behaviour. See COMMAND-LINE OPTIONS above.

The default configuration file is /etc/apt-cacher/apt-cacher.conf. It is read every time the daemon starts or CGI/inetd slave are executed. Therefore a stand-alone daemon may need to be restarted or reloaded using the init script in order to reread its configuration. A running daemon will also reread the configuration file on receiving SIGHUP (see SIGNALS below).

Each line in the file consists of

configuration_option = value

Long lines can be split by preceding the newlines with '\'. Whitespace is ignored. Lines beginning with '#' are comments and are ignored. If multiple assignments of the same option occur, only the last one will take effect. For binary options, 0 means off or disabled, any other integer means on or enabled. Options which can accept lists may use either ';' or ',' to separate the individual list members.

The options available in the config file (and their default settings) are:

Universal Options

cache_dir [/var/cache/apt-cacher]

The directory where apt-cacher will store local copies of all packages requested. This can grow to many hundreds of MB, so make sure it is on a partition with plenty of room. NOTE: the cache directory needs to contain some subdirectories for correct storage management. If you try to create a custom directory, please use the script /usr/share/apt-cacher/install.pl or use the initially created cache directory as example.

admin_email [root@localhost]

The email address of the administrator is displayed in the info page and traffic reports.

offline_mode [0]

Avoid any outgoing connection, return files available in the cache and just return errors if they are missing.

allowed_locations

Only allow access to specific upstream mirrors. The requested URL must match an item in this list for access to be granted. The part of the URL referring to the apt-cacher server itself (http://apt-cacher.server:port[/apt-cacher]/) is ignored. Matching begins immediately after that.

path_map

A mapping scheme to rewrite URLs, which converts the first part of the URL after the apt-cacher server name to a remote mirror. For example, if you set

path_map = debian ftp.debian.org/debian

retrieving

http://apt-cacher.server:3142/debian/dists/stable/Release

will actually fetch

http://apt-cacher.server:3142/:ftp.debian.org/debian/dists/stable/Release

package_files_regexp [see http://apt-cacher.server:port/]

Perl regular expression (perlre(1)) which matches all package-type files (files that are uniquely identified by their filename).

index_files_regexp [see http://apt-cacher.server:port/]

Perl regular expression (perlre(1)) which matches all index-type files (files that are uniquely identified by their full path and need to be checked for freshness).

installer_files_regexp [see http://apt-cacher.server:port/]

Perl regular expression (perlre(1)) which matches all files used by the Debian installer or Debian Live (files that are uniquely identified by their full path but don't need to be checked for freshness).

generate_reports [1]

Whether to generate traffic reports daily. Traffic reports can be accessed by pointing a browser to

http://apt-cacher.server:3142/report/ [daemon mode] or

http://apt-cacher.server[:port]/apt-cacher/report/ [CGI mode].

clean_cache [1]

Whether to flush obsolete versions of packages from your cache daily. You can check what will be done by running

/usr/share/apt-cacher-cleaner.pl -s

which will just show what would be done to the contents of the cache. A package version is not obsolete if any of the distributions (stable, testing, etc) or architectures you use reference it. It should be safe to leave this on.

logdir [/var/log/apt-cacher]

Directory to use for the access and error log files and traffic report. The access log records all successful package requests using a timestamp, whether the request was fulfilled from cache, the IP address of the requesting computer, the size of the package transferred, and the name of the package. The error log records major faults, and is also used for debug messages if the debug directive is set to 1. Debugging is toggled by sending SIGUSR1 (see SIGNALS below).

expire_hours [0]

How many hours Package and Release files are cached before they are assumed to be too old and must be re-fetched. Setting 0 means that the validity of these files is checked on each access by comparing time stamps in HTTP headers on the server with those stored locally.

http_proxy []

Apt-cacher can pass all its requests to an external http proxy like Squid, which could be very useful if you are using an ISP that blocks port 80 and requires all web traffic to go through its proxy. The format is 'hostname:port'.

use_proxy [0]

Use of an external proxy can be turned on or off with this option.

http_proxy_auth []

External http proxy sometimes need authentication to get full access. The format is 'username:password', eg: 'proxyuser:proxypass'.

use_proxy_auth [0]

Use of external proxy authentication can be turned on or off with this option.

interface []

Specify a particular interface to use for the upstream connection. Can be an interface name, IP address or host name. If unset, the default route is used.

limit [0]

Rate limiting sets the maximum rate in bytes per second used for fetching files from the upstream mirrors. Syntax is fully defined in wget(1). Use 'k' or 'm' to use kilobits or megabits per second: e.g. 'limit=25k'. Use 0 or a negative value for no rate limiting.

user [www-data]

The effective user id to change to after allocating the ports.

group [www-data]

The effective group id to change to.

checksum [0]

Switches on experimental checksum validation of files. Requires libberkeleydb-perl.

debug [0]

Whether debug mode is enabled. Off by default. When turned on (non-nil), lots of extra debug information will be written to the error log. This can make the error log become quite big, so only use it when trying to debug problems. Additional information from the libcurl backend can be obtained by increasing this parameter. The correspondence between this setting and curl_infotype is:-

1

CURLINFO_TEXT

2

CURLINFO_HEADER_IN

3

CURLINFO_HEADER_OUT

4

CURLINFO_DATA_IN

5

CURLINFO_DATA_OUT

6

CURLINFO_SSL_DATA_IN

7

CURLINFO_SSL_DATA_OUT

See CURLOPT_DEBUGFUNCTION in curl_easy_setopt(3) for further information.

Stand-alone Daemon-mode Options

daemon_port [3142]

The TCP port to bind to.

daemon_addr [unset]

The daemon can be resticted to listen only on particular local IP address(es). Single item or list of IPs. Use with care.

allowed_hosts [*]

If your apt-cacher server is directly connected to the Internet and you are worried about unauthorised fetching of packages through it, you can specify a range of IP addresses that are allowed to use it. Localhost (127.0.0.1) is always allowed, other addresses must be matched by allowed_hosts and not by denied_hosts to be permitted to use the cache. Note that by default apt-cacher will allow requests from any client, so set a range here if you want to restrict access. This can be a single item, list, IP address with netmask or IP range See the default configuration file for further details and examples.

denied_hosts

The opposite of allowed_hosts setting, excludes hosts from the list of allowed hosts. Not used in inetd daemon mode.

allowed_hosts_6

Like allowed_hosts for IPv6 clients.

denied_hosts_6

Like denied_hosts for IPv6 clients.

CLIENT CONFIGURATION

There are two different ways of configuring clients to use apt-cacher's cache. Ensure that you do not use a mixture of both methods. Changing both proxy settings and base URLs can create some confusion.

Access cache like a mirror

To use the cache in this way, edit /etc/apt/sources.list on each client and prepend the address of the apt-cacher server to each deb/src line.

For example, if you have:

deb http://ftp.debian.org stable main

change it to read either

deb http://apt-cacher.server[:port]/ftp.debian.org stable main [server in daemon mode]

or     

deb http://apt-cacher.server[:port]/apt-cacher/ftp.debian.org stable main [server in CGI mode]

Access cache like a proxy

For clients to use the cache in this way, set the apt-cacher server as a proxy on each client by setting the proxy URL in apt.conf. For example:

Acquire::http::Proxy "http://apt-cacher.server:port";

See apt.conf(5) for further details.

If you configure clients this way and also use apt-listbugs(1) you will need to exclude bugs.debian.org from proxying, as apt-listbugs sends (unsupported) POST requests. For example:

Acquire::http::Proxy::bugs.debian.org "DIRECT";

It is not recommended to set the http_proxy environment variable as this may effect a wide variety of applications using a variety of URLs. Apt-cacher will not work as a general purpose web cache!

FAQ

Q: Can I just copy some .debs into the cache dir and have it work (precaching)?

A: Almost! A bit additional work is also required to make them usable and persistent in the cache.

First: alongside with the debs apt-cacher stores additional information: a flag file to verify that the package is completely downloaded, and a file with HTTP headers that have been sent from the server. If you copy .debs straight into the storage directory and don't add those things, fetching them *will* fail.

Fortunately Apt-cacher now comes with an import helper script to make things easier. Just put a bunch of .debs into /var/cache/apt-cacher/import (or a directory called 'import' inside whatever you've set your cache dir to be), and run /usr/share/apt-cacher/apt-cacher-import.pl (you can specify alternative source directory with the first parameter). The script will run through all the package files it finds in that dir and move them around to the correct locations plus create additional flag/header files. Run it with "-h" to get more information about how to use additional features - it can work in recursive mode while discovering the files and save space by making links to files located elsewhere in the filesystem.

Second: if the daily cleanup operation is enabled (see clean_cache option above) and there is no Packages.gz (or .bz2) file that refers to the new files, the package files will be removed really soon. From another point of view: if there are potential clients that would download these packages and the clients did run "apt-get update" using apt-cacher once, there is no reason to worry.

Q: Does the daily generation of reports or cleaning the cache depend on whether apt-cacher is running continuously as a daemon?

A: No, the regular maintenance jobs are independent of a running server. They are executed by cron and use only static data like logs and cached index files and package directory listing. However, apt-cacher should be configured correctly because cleanup runs it directly (in inetd mode) to refresh the Packages/Sources files.

Q: Are host names permissible? What if a host is in both lists (a literal reading of the current description is that the host is denied)?

A: No, you must supply IP addresses.

Unlike with some other software like Apache, the access control is slightly different because there is no configurable checking order. Instead, a client host is checked using both filters, allowed_hosts and denied_hosts. Following combinations are possible: allowed_hosts=* and denied_hosts is empty, then every host is allowed; allowed_hosts=<ip data> and denied_hosts=empty, then only defined hosts are permitted; allowed_hosts=* and denied_hosts=<ip data>, then every host is accepted except of those matched by denied_hosts; allowed_hosts=<ip data> and denied_hosts=<ip data>, then only the clients from allowed_hosts are accepted except of those matched by denied_hosts. allowed_hosts=<empty> blocks everything. If allowed_hosts is omitted, * is assumed. denied_hosts must not have an "*" value, use empty allowed_hosts setting if you want that.

Q: generate_reports: how does being able to view the reports depend on the web server you are running? Are they only available if apt-cacher is running on port 80?

The report is generated using a script (started by a cron job, see above) and is stored as $logdir/report.html. You can access it using the "/report" path in the access URL. If apt-cacher is running in CGI mode, then the URL for the browser looks like http://apt-cacher.server[:port]/apt-cacher/report/.

LIMITATIONS

Apt-cacher currently only handles forwarding GET requests to HTTP sources. Support for other access methods (ftp, rsync) is not currently planned.

FILES

/etc/apt-cacher/apt-cacher.conf

main configuration file

/var/log/apt-cacher

log directory, rotated by logrotate if available

/var/log/report.html

report page, generated by the helper script

AUTHOR

Apt-cacher was originally written by Nick Andrews <[email protected]>. This manual page was originally written by Jonathan Oxer <[email protected]>, for the Debian GNU/Linux system (but may be used by others). It was maintained by Eduard Bloch <[email protected]>, and it is now maintained by Mark Hindley <[email protected]>.