Local Distfiles

Finder · n00b Joined: 19 Oct 2004 Posts: 2

Hi, I'm new to gentoo and came up with something I couldn't find on the forums, though it is a simple concept(that evaded me for a few weeks). The general idea is this: my desktop is my main computer, and I pretty much download everything onto it, and have everything I want on it under Gentoo. I also have a laptop that has a much smaller hard drive, but that I still have gentoo on and want to be able to emerge files on without downloading the whole thing from the internet(since 99% of the emerges I do on my laptop already exist on my desktop as distfiles.)
So what I did was I set up my desktop to run apache, created a directory of gentoo, and within that made a symlink to my distfiles directory. Since my router is blocking access to my port I run apache at, this is only available to my local network. Now, I did a mirrorselect on my laptop to select some real mirrors, and in the beginning of the GENTOO_MIRRORS I added my desktop's ip and directory first, specifically being http://192.168.1.150/gentoo. That way, when my desktop doesn't have the distfile, it fails and continues going through the real hosts, but when it does, it downloads it directly from my desktop. Hope this helps.

Deranger · Veteran Joined: 26 Aug 2004 Posts: 1215

That's a very good idea if user doesn't have much BW or doesn't want to download sources again, on different computer. Thanks for the tip!

flybynite · l33t Joined: 06 Dec 2002 Posts: 620

This will work but has limitations as you've probably noticed. One such limitation is what happens if you download on the laptop first? Then the file is only on the laptop and not usable on the desktop!

I know if you always pay attention and download on the desktop first then you won't have this problem....

Or you could use http-replicator which has so many advantages. It works seemlessly with portage and can download a file from the internet while simultaneously streaming that same file to multiple computers. That way it doesn't matter which or how many boxes download whatever files they need - only 1 copy ever comes from the internet. The bonus is that once in the cache, other boxes can download the file at the full speed of your LAN!

See https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic.php?t=173226 for more info...

Finder · n00b Joined: 19 Oct 2004 Posts: 2

That's great, I'm definitely going to try it. Looks like you've done a great job on it.

chunderbunny · Posted: Wed Oct 20, 2004 12:02 pm Post subject:

Or you can share your /usr/portage directory over NFS. There are many ways of solving this problem.

cuerty · Posted: Wed Oct 20, 2004 6:59 pm Post subject:

I like the Apache and mod_proxy and mod_cache aproach:

flybynite · l33t Joined: 06 Dec 2002 Posts: 620

flybynite · l33t Joined: 06 Dec 2002 Posts: 620

mäkke_renamed · n00b Joined: 20 Mar 2004 Posts: 6

flybynite · l33t Joined: 06 Dec 2002 Posts: 620

sure this works....

but how do you add files to the mirror from a client???

That is one of the MANY problems http-replicator solves....

woZa · Posted: Fri Nov 05, 2004 11:14 am Post subject:

I'm with flybynite...

http-replicator works great. I can update all 5 of my machines at the same time with no problems if some want the same file (which they do most of the time as 4 of the machines are identical...)

Sharing over nfs caused me all sorts of problems trying to update all at once.
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A few months struggling with gentoo is better than a lifetime struggling with windoze!