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Apt-cacher-ng: Setting Up a Proxy for APT

Introduction

Without having an amazing internet connection and using virtual machines, it quickly becomes tedious to wait ages to download the same packages for all these VMs. So I looked for a solution to have a kind of cache specifically for apt.

I found happiness with apt-cacher-ng which, from what I've read, is the most complete solution available today.

Installation

As usual, it's simple:

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aptitude install apt-cacher-ng

My server has the IP 192.168.100.1. If you want to modify some small options, I invite you to look at the file /etc/apt-cacher-ng/acng.conf.

Then restart the service.

Configuration

This part is fairly easy, as we'll tell the apt service to use a proxy. We'll set it up on both the server and clients:

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Acquire::http { Proxy "http://192.168.100.1:3142"; };

Then we update everything:

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aptitude update

Usage

By default, there's a small graphical interface that allows you to update, import, verify, manage expiration, etc. The address is: http://192.168.100.1:3142/acng-report.html