On 14 May 2010 12:18, Samuel Toogood <sam_toog...@athsoc.org.uk> wrote: > First post for a while, and I don't usually start threads, but I've been > lurking, and I don't think this has appeared before. > > I recently had an idea for improving ubuntu: Wouldn't it be good if packages > could be distributed in a peer to peer manner, as .isos can be? This would > have several advantages, including: > 1. If you have more than one ubuntu machine, no need to download everything > multiple times, and no need to maintain an apt-mirror, it all just happens. > 2. There are times, such as when a release first comes out, when the > repositories get huge spikes in demand, this would help with that. > > The potential downside would be the threat of packages containing malware > being propagated around, but this can be got around by checksumming etc. > > Like most of my ideas, it appears someone else got there first. There is a > package in the repositories called apt-p2p which appears to be what I am > talking about. Its homepage is at http://www.camrdale.org/apt-p2p/ . Has > anyone used this? What do people think of the concept? Could it be > integrated into the GUI for managing sources? > > Hope that makes sense. > > Sam >
There are some packages in the Ubuntu repositories that already do something like this. Look at: squid-deb-proxy - Squid proxy configuration optimized for deb packages squid-deb-proxy-client - Automatic proxy discovery for apt based on avahi They're available in universe on lucid (10.04). HTH Neil. -- ubuntu-uk@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UKTeam/
