Creating a local RPM repository

[nytephyr]

I am currently reviewing the possibility of allowing some of our employees to use Fedora on their machines instead of Windows.  On of my concerns is the bandwidth tied up by multiple machines downloading the same RPMs through our Internet gateway.  Is there a way to set up a local RPM repository on our internal networks so that the RPMs only have to be downloaded from the main repositories once.  All of our user machines would be configured to look at the local repository instead of the main one.

 

As an example, I set up two test system yesterday with FC11.  After the initial install, each machine needed to download significant amounts of updates.  I would have much preferred that they got those updates from a local source.  This would have reduced the bandwidth clog on our gateway (3MB bandwidth) and reduced the install time due to the updates coming from a local source (1GB bandwidth).

 

Any suggestions or instruction would be greatly appreciated.

 

Mike

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[Michael Cronenworth]

Ian Stakenvicius, Aerobiology Research on 11/06/2009 09:53 AM wrote:
> I am currently reviewing the possibility of allowing some of our
> employees to use Fedora on their machines instead of Windows.  On of my
> concerns is the bandwidth tied up by multiple machines downloading the
> same RPMs through our Internet gateway.  Is there a way to set up a
> local RPM repository on our internal networks so that the RPMs only have
> to be downloaded from the main repositories once.  All of our user
> machines would be configured to look at the local repository instead of
> the main one.

Yes. I do such a thing at my workplace. You will just set up a nightly
cron job (or however you want to do it) and rsync with a public repo.

You can either create your own RPM with your local /etc/yum.repo.d files
for fast installation or install them manually. Use the existing
fedora.repo and fedora-updates.repo files as templates and change them
to use a baseurl instead of a mirrorlist. You can use HTTP or FTP. I
used FTP.

P.S. I applaud you for allowing Fedora!

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[Itamar Reis Peixoto]

create a local fedora mirror.


On Fri, Nov 6, 2009 at 3:21 PM, Mike Smith
<Mike.Smith@...> wrote:

> I am currently reviewing the possibility of allowing some of our employees
> to use Fedora on their machines instead of Windows.  On of my concerns is
> the bandwidth tied up by multiple machines downloading the same RPMs through
> our Internet gateway.  Is there a way to set up a local RPM repository on
> our internal networks so that the RPMs only have to be downloaded from the
> main repositories once.  All of our user machines would be configured to
> look at the local repository instead of the main one.
>
> As an example, I set up two test system yesterday with FC11.  After the
> initial install, each machine needed to download significant amounts of
> updates.  I would have much preferred that they got those updates from a
> local source.  This would have reduced the bandwidth clog on our gateway
> (3MB bandwidth) and reduced the install time due to the updates coming from
> a local source (1GB bandwidth).
>
> Any suggestions or instruction would be greatly appreciated.
>
> Mike
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[Tim-163]

On Fri, 2009-11-06 at 09:21 -0800, Mike Smith wrote:
> I am currently reviewing the possibility of allowing some of our
> employees to use Fedora on their machines instead of Windows.  On of
> my concerns is the bandwidth tied up by multiple machines downloading
> the same RPMs through our Internet gateway.  Is there a way to set up
> a local RPM repository on our internal networks so that the RPMs only
> have to be downloaded from the main repositories once.  All of our
> user machines would be configured to look at the local repository
> instead of the main one.

Yes, and if you googled your subject line, you'd probably have found the
answer.  Or you could try googling create local yum repo.

I don't recall the answer for creating the repo, else I'd say it here.
But it's not hard to find.  It comes up often enough.

Another option is to simply use a caching proxy (e.g. Squid) between you
and one mirror, and set the clients to all use the same mirror (through
your proxy).  When one client fetches a package, it's cached, the next
client will use the cached copy.  Squid will take care of expunging old
cached content, itself (there's file age, and amount of bytes filling
the cache, that it considers).  You don't have to set up one machine to
be a yum mirror, they're all just clients.

It's a marvellous way to stop Windows update from wasting your
bandwidth, too (if you're going to keep some of those Windows boxes
still working).

--
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[n2xssvv.g02gfr12930]

On 06/11/09 17:21, Mike Smith wrote:

> I am currently reviewing the possibility of allowing some of our
> employees to use Fedora on their machines instead of Windows.  On of my
> concerns is the bandwidth tied up by multiple machines downloading the
> same RPMs through our Internet gateway.  Is there a way to set up a
> local RPM repository on our internal networks so that the RPMs only have
> to be downloaded from the main repositories once.  All of our user
> machines would be configured to look at the local repository instead of
> the main one.
>  
> As an example, I set up two test system yesterday with FC11.  After the
> initial install, each machine needed to download significant amounts of
> updates.  I would have much preferred that they got those updates from a
> local source.  This would have reduced the bandwidth clog on our gateway
> (3MB bandwidth) and reduced the install time due to the updates coming
> from a local source (1GB bandwidth).
>  
> Any suggestions or instruction would be greatly appreciated.
>  
> Mike
>

Mike,

There is an application called createrepo available which will create
the repo based on then RPMs in a directory. This should be a good place
to start. I've used it before with any problems.

JB

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[nytephyr]

Thank you to all who replied.

Now I have a couple of options to consider (and will review what I can find
via Google).

-----Original Message-----
From: fedora-list-bounces@... [mailto:fedora-list-bounces@...]
On Behalf Of Tim
Sent: Friday, November 06, 2009 9:34 AM
To: Community assistance, encouragement,and advice for using Fedora.
Subject: Re: Creating a local RPM repository

On Fri, 2009-11-06 at 09:21 -0800, Mike Smith wrote:
> I am currently reviewing the possibility of allowing some of our
> employees to use Fedora on their machines instead of Windows.  On of
> my concerns is the bandwidth tied up by multiple machines downloading
> the same RPMs through our Internet gateway.  Is there a way to set up
> a local RPM repository on our internal networks so that the RPMs only
> have to be downloaded from the main repositories once.  All of our
> user machines would be configured to look at the local repository
> instead of the main one.

Yes, and if you googled your subject line, you'd probably have found the
answer.  Or you could try googling create local yum repo.

I don't recall the answer for creating the repo, else I'd say it here.
But it's not hard to find.  It comes up often enough.

Another option is to simply use a caching proxy (e.g. Squid) between you and
one mirror, and set the clients to all use the same mirror (through your
proxy).  When one client fetches a package, it's cached, the next client
will use the cached copy.  Squid will take care of expunging old cached
content, itself (there's file age, and amount of bytes filling the cache,
that it considers).  You don't have to set up one machine to be a yum
mirror, they're all just clients.

It's a marvellous way to stop Windows update from wasting your bandwidth,
too (if you're going to keep some of those Windows boxes still working).

--
[tim@localhost ~]$ uname -r
2.6.27.25-78.2.56.fc9.i686

Don't send private replies to my address, the mailbox is ignored.  I read
messages from the public lists.



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[Itamar Reis Peixoto]

look here ->

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Infrastructure/Mirroring



On Fri, Nov 6, 2009 at 4:12 PM, Mike Smith
<Mike.Smith@...> wrote:
> Thank you to all who replied.
>
> Now I have a couple of options to consider (and will review what I can find
> via Google).


------------

Itamar Reis Peixoto

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[phone]
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[Athmane Madjoudj]

On Fri, Nov 6, 2009 at 6:21 PM, Mike Smith
<Mike.Smith@...> wrote:

> I am currently reviewing the possibility of allowing some of our employees
> to use Fedora on their machines instead of Windows.  On of my concerns is
> the bandwidth tied up by multiple machines downloading the same RPMs through
> our Internet gateway.  Is there a way to set up a local RPM repository on
> our internal networks so that the RPMs only have to be downloaded from the
> main repositories once.  All of our user machines would be configured to
> look at the local repository instead of the main one.
>
> As an example, I set up two test system yesterday with FC11.  After the
> initial install, each machine needed to download significant amounts of
> updates.  I would have much preferred that they got those updates from a
> local source.  This would have reduced the bandwidth clog on our gateway
> (3MB bandwidth) and reduced the install time due to the updates coming from
> a local source (1GB bandwidth).
>
> Any suggestions or instruction would be greatly appreciated.
>
> Mike
> --
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> To unsubscribe: https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-list
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>

You can use createrepo to create a local repo and setup yum on all
computer in the network to use your repo first.

See (Draft):
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Extras/CreateRepo

- Or -

You can setup a Caching Proxy (eg: squid) and reduce traffic on all
http and ftp protocols which yum uses them.

Best regards

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[Bill Davidsen]

Mike Smith wrote:

> I am currently reviewing the possibility of allowing some of our
> employees to use Fedora on their machines instead of Windows.  On of my
> concerns is the bandwidth tied up by multiple machines downloading the
> same RPMs through our Internet gateway.  Is there a way to set up a
> local RPM repository on our internal networks so that the RPMs only have
> to be downloaded from the main repositories once.  All of our user
> machines would be configured to look at the local repository instead of
> the main one.
>  
> As an example, I set up two test system yesterday with FC11.  After the
> initial install, each machine needed to download significant amounts of
> updates.  I would have much preferred that they got those updates from a
> local source.  This would have reduced the bandwidth clog on our gateway
> (3MB bandwidth) and reduced the install time due to the updates coming
> from a local source (1GB bandwidth).
>  
> Any suggestions or instruction would be greatly appreciated.
>  

For a small number of machines you can just NFS mount /var/cache/yum off a
server, change keepcache in /etc/yum.conf to 1, and don't update more than one
machine at a time. I like the idea of a squid proxy, but NFS is really simple.
If you have an administrator who can run the upgrades, or at least tell the
users when to upgrade, then you download each new rpm only once, it is left in
the shared storage, and the next machine to need it gets it locally.

I've been using this since FC11 came out, about six months, on three physical
servers supporting many virtual servers. The virtual do the same thing with
CentOS-5.3, and it has not been an issue.

Note: not as sexy as your own repository, may not like multiple upgrades at the
same time (I think the localupdate option fixes this), but it is quite simple
and works well here. My machines tend to use 90% the same packages, and 10%
application packages based on use. I found a local repo had a ton of packages I
never used, and used bandwidth updating them. The 'repomanage' command allows
you to selectively trim old versions of packages to save space.

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   "We have more to fear from the bungling of the incompetent than from
the machinations of the wicked."  - from Slashdot

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[Timothy Murphy-5]

n2xssvv.g02gfr12930 wrote:

> There is an application called createrepo available which will create
> the repo based on then RPMs in a directory. This should be a good place
> to start. I've used it before with any problems.

But couldn't yum just have an option to look for RPMs on the local network?
Ie look first in local cache, then on LAN, then at remote repo.
I would have thought that would be easy to implement.

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[Todd Zullinger]

Timothy Murphy wrote:
> But couldn't yum just have an option to look for RPMs on the local
> network?  Ie look first in local cache, then on LAN, then at remote
> repo.  I would have thought that would be easy to implement.

It's trivial to change the yum repo settings to look anywhere you
want.

It's also possible to become a private mirror and have the default
fedora mirrorlists return your own site when clients within your
netblock request updates.  See How can someone make a private mirror?
at http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Infrastructure/Mirroring, which I
believe was already mentioned in this thread.

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[Timothy Murphy-5]

Todd Zullinger wrote:

> Timothy Murphy wrote:
>> But couldn't yum just have an option to look for RPMs on the local
>> network?  Ie look first in local cache, then on LAN, then at remote
>> repo.  I would have thought that would be easy to implement.
>
> It's trivial to change the yum repo settings to look anywhere you
> want.

Concretely, I want yum to look first in /var/cache/yum/updates on my laptop,
then in alfred:/var/cache/yum/updates on a local machine,
and then in the remote repository.

What exactly can I put in /etc/yum.repos.d/fedora-updates.repo
to implement this?

> It's also possible to become a private mirror and have the default
> fedora mirrorlists return your own site when clients within your
> netblock request updates.  See How can someone make a private mirror?
> at http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Infrastructure/Mirroring, which I
> believe was already mentioned in this thread.

I've looked at a couple of the sites mentioned in this thread,
and I am afraid the instructions are simply too complicated to follow.
(The document you mention seems to have over 100 pages,
which to me is information over-kill.)

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[Todd Zullinger]

Timothy Murphy wrote:
> Concretely, I want yum to look first in /var/cache/yum/updates on my
> laptop, then in alfred:/var/cache/yum/updates on a local machine,
> and then in the remote repository.

Why would you want yum to look in /var/cache/yum/updates on the local
system?  The only thing that should be there are things already
installed.  Or do you install and remove things frequently?

The /var/cache/yum dirs do not contain a repodata dir, so I don't know
if yum can use them as an entry in a baseurl option directly or not.
If not, you'd just want to run createrepo on the packages dir and then
add something like

baseurl=file:///var/cache/yum/updates/packages

Personally, I think that's a bunch of work for little gain.  If you
enough systems that need updates and you don't have bandwidth for them
all to update individually, you'd be better off using rsync to create
a local mirror or setting up something like IntelligentMirror.

> I've looked at a couple of the sites mentioned in this thread, and I
> am afraid the instructions are simply too complicated to follow.
> (The document you mention seems to have over 100 pages, which to me
> is information over-kill.)

I'm sorry that the information isn't presented in small enough bites
for your taste.  The section on creating a private mirror is only a
few paragraphs and links to IntelligentMirror if you'd rather check
that out.

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[Patrick O'Callaghan-2]

On Sat, 2009-11-07 at 14:56 +0000, Timothy Murphy wrote:

> Todd Zullinger wrote:
>
> > Timothy Murphy wrote:
> >> But couldn't yum just have an option to look for RPMs on the local
> >> network?  Ie look first in local cache, then on LAN, then at remote
> >> repo.  I would have thought that would be easy to implement.
> >
> > It's trivial to change the yum repo settings to look anywhere you
> > want.
>
> Concretely, I want yum to look first in /var/cache/yum/updates on my laptop,
> then in alfred:/var/cache/yum/updates on a local machine,
> and then in the remote repository.
>
> What exactly can I put in /etc/yum.repos.d/fedora-updates.repo
> to implement this?

yum install yum-plugin-priorities

poc

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[Timothy Murphy-5]

Patrick O'Callaghan wrote:

>> Concretely, I want yum to look first in /var/cache/yum/updates on my
>> laptop, then in alfred:/var/cache/yum/updates on a local machine,
>> and then in the remote repository.
>>
>> What exactly can I put in /etc/yum.repos.d/fedora-updates.repo
>> to implement this?
>
> yum install yum-plugin-priorities

Thanks.
I've installed that, but haven't worked out
how to use it to make yum look on my local network ...

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tel: [phone]
s-mail: School of Mathematics, Trinity College, Dublin 2, Ireland

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[Timothy Murphy-5]

Todd Zullinger wrote:

>> Concretely, I want yum to look first in /var/cache/yum/updates on my
>> laptop, then in alfred:/var/cache/yum/updates on a local machine,
>> and then in the remote repository.
>
> Why would you want yum to look in /var/cache/yum/updates on the local
> system?

I just assumed that yum did look there first
(I don't think yum goes to the remote repository
if the RPM is already in the local directory?),
and I was suggesting that a second option should be added.

> The only thing that should be there are things already
> installed.  Or do you install and remove things frequently?

I install frequently, but remove rarely.

>> I've looked at a couple of the sites mentioned in this thread, and I
>> am afraid the instructions are simply too complicated to follow.
>> (The document you mention seems to have over 100 pages, which to me
>> is information over-kill.)
>
> I'm sorry that the information isn't presented in small enough bites
> for your taste.  The section on creating a private mirror is only a
> few paragraphs and links to IntelligentMirror if you'd rather check
> that out.

I don't think I really want to create a private mirror,
which sounds rather complicated.
The default of running "yum update" on my small menagerie
is quite acceptable;
any alternative would have to be almost as simple.

As to supplying information in small bites,
that is indeed probably what I want.
A document that contains the answer to every question in the universe
is only slightly more useful than a document that contains nothing.



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[Patrick O'Callaghan-2]

On Sat, 2009-11-07 at 15:46 +0000, Timothy Murphy wrote:

> Patrick O'Callaghan wrote:
>
> >> Concretely, I want yum to look first in /var/cache/yum/updates on my
> >> laptop, then in alfred:/var/cache/yum/updates on a local machine,
> >> and then in the remote repository.
> >>
> >> What exactly can I put in /etc/yum.repos.d/fedora-updates.repo
> >> to implement this?
> >
> > yum install yum-plugin-priorities
>
> Thanks.
> I've installed that, but haven't worked out
> how to use it to make yum look on my local network ...

yum doesn't know anything about "looking on your local network". You
still have to set up a repo and point to it.

poc

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[Timothy Murphy-5]

Patrick O'Callaghan wrote:

>>
>> >> Concretely, I want yum to look first in /var/cache/yum/updates on my
>> >> laptop, then in alfred:/var/cache/yum/updates on a local machine,
>> >> and then in the remote repository.
>> >>
>> >> What exactly can I put in /etc/yum.repos.d/fedora-updates.repo
>> >> to implement this?
>> >
>> > yum install yum-plugin-priorities
>>
>> Thanks.
>> I've installed that, but haven't worked out
>> how to use it to make yum look on my local network ...
>
> yum doesn't know anything about "looking on your local network". You
> still have to set up a repo and point to it.

In that case, I'm not clear how yum-plugin-priorities would help.

I see that there is a yum-downloadonly package,
which I just installed.
This adds an option --downloadonly.

I assume that you can then later run "yum update",
and it will install or update the packages that were downloaded,
as well as any other new ones.

If that is so, then it seems to imply that yum looks first
in /var/cache/yum/ to see if required packages are already downloaded.
If it finds them there then it uses them;
otherwise it downloads them from a remote repository.

That being so, my question is: why not allow yum to look at
what yum has saved on another computer?

I notice that after installing the yum-downloadonly package,
there is another new option --downloaddir=DLDIR
which seems to allow RPMs (and other files in /var/cache/yum/ ?)
to be installed in a specified directory.

It's not clear to me if yum will remember this new directory
if I use both these options --downloadonly and --downloaddir=OLDIR ?
Or will I have to specify --downloaddir again when updating?

Is all this a possible way of saving RPMs on a /common directory
served by NFS?

I suspect I may have misunderstood the basics of yum ...


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tel: [phone]
s-mail: School of Mathematics, Trinity College, Dublin 2, Ireland

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[Tim-163]

On Sat, 2009-11-07 at 19:01 +0000, Timothy Murphy wrote:
> it seems to imply that yum looks first
> in /var/cache/yum/ to see if required packages are already downloaded.
> If it finds them there then it uses them;
> otherwise it downloads them from a remote repository.

In a sense, it does.  If the package is available in the cache, yum
doesn't download it, again.  However, when looking for updates, it first
looks at the repo data, which lists what packages are available (i.e.
what's new).  That's something that you won't have locally, unless
you've grabbed it from somewhere else.

Personally, I find the simple HTTP/FTP caching approach with Squid is
the simplest:  You configure your yums, on all machines, to use just one
mirror, and to fetch through your proxy.  Squid caches what you get.
And you only download, and cache, the packages that you actually use.

Some of the local mirroring options involve blindly downloading every
update that's released.  Whether, or not, you use that package.  For me,
that'd be a huge waste of bandwidth and drive space.

--
[tim@localhost ~]$ uname -r
2.6.27.25-78.2.56.fc9.i686

Don't send private replies to my address, the mailbox is ignored.  I
read messages from the public lists.



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[Timothy Murphy-5]

Tim wrote:

> Personally, I find the simple HTTP/FTP caching approach with Squid is
> the simplest:  You configure your yums, on all machines, to use just one
> mirror, and to fetch through your proxy.  Squid caches what you get.
> And you only download, and cache, the packages that you actually use.

You convinced me to start squid,
but unfortunately after reading my trusty tutorial,
<http://www.brennan.id.au/11-Squid_Web_Proxy.html>,
and looking through /etc/squid/squid.conf ,
I decided the chances of my making a mistake,
and cutting off my family from the internet,
was too high to risk.

I do realise that it would be good to run squid on my server,
but as I said it seems a risky enterprise.

Is it possible to use squid just for yum, say,
as an experimental start?

> Some of the local mirroring options involve blindly downloading every
> update that's released.  Whether, or not, you use that package.  For me,
> that'd be a huge waste of bandwidth and drive space.

That was exactly what I felt about setting up a mirror,
which as far as I could see meant mirroring the official repository.


--
Timothy Murphy  
e-mail: gayleard /at/ eircom.net
tel: [phone]
s-mail: School of Mathematics, Trinity College, Dublin 2, Ireland

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