Re: [PLUG] 2013-05-21 PLUG W follow-up

[JP Vossen <jp@jpsdomain.org>]

Oh, I forgot.  We also talked about having in-house Ubuntu repos for 
enterprise distribution, staging for patch control, etc.

I personally use the obsolete and a bit buggy 'http-replicator' proxy, see:
	https://help.ubuntu.com/community/HttpReplicator (last changed by me)
	http://sourceforge.net/projects/http-replicator/

The SF.net project says "Last Update: 2013-04-26" but the code hasn't 
been touched since early 2008.  It works for my limited use, but I can't 
recommend it.

'apt-cache search proxy | less -N' on Ubuntu 12.04 LTS turns up 366 
hits, including:
[...]
      4 approx - caching proxy server for Debian archive files
      5 apt-cacher - Caching proxy for Debian package and source files
      6 apt-cacher-ng - caching proxy server for software repositories
      7 apt-p2p - apt helper for peer-to-peer downloads of Debian packages
[...]
     36 debtorrent - bittorrent proxy for downloading Debian packages
[...]
    310 squid-deb-proxy - Squid proxy configuration optimized for deb 
packages
[...]

I *think* that "approx" used to require re-writing the 
'/etc/apt/source.list' file but does not any longer.  See 'apt-cache 
show approx apt-cacher apt-cacher-ng squid-deb-proxy' and perhaps 
'apt-cache show apt-p2p debtorrent' for more details.  If anyone looks 
deeper and can make a recommendation (or do a talk!) please let us know! 
 I really ought to get myself off http-replicator...


But none of that really handles the enterprise need for local testing 
and staging of updates.  Canonical has a commercial offering for that 
[1], and it looks like MS System Center Configuration Manager (AKA SMS) 
can handle Ubuntu too (I'm not sure whether to be horrified or 
gratified) [2].  But creating a local repo isn't that hard [3], and with 
a bit of scripting it should be possible to create the typical upstream 
--> staging --> production flow you'd expect.  What might be really 
interesting is combining the two so you only mirror the sub-set of the 
repo that you need (like the proxy idea), but with the ability to stage 
updates.

And some quick Google searches [4] seemed quite interesting.  Lots of 
people point to Nagios, Chef & Puppet, and even Spacewalk [5].

Again, anyone who dives in please report and/or do a preso!

Later,
JP

________________________________________
Footnotes

[1] http://www.canonical.com/enterprise-services/ubuntu-advantage/landscape
[2] http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2798547
[3] 
http://www.supportsages.com/blog/2010/05/how-to-create-a-local-ubuntu-repository-updateupgrade-distros-locally-and-thereby-save-bandwidth/
[4] https://www.google.com/search?q=ubuntu+landscape+free
	http://askubuntu.com/questions/112243/are-there-any-open-source-alternative-to-landscape
	http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1436422
https://www.google.com/search?q=ubuntu+landscape+alternative
[5] https://fedorahosted.org/spacewalk/wiki/Deb_support_in_spacewalk

----------------------------|:::======|-------------------------------
JP Vossen, CISSP            |:::======|      http://bashcookbook.com/
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