Friday, 11th September 2009, 2225hrs jw Debian | Linux
Ubuntu and Debian packages are all bundled in something what is called a repository. Some people, like me, create their own:
My repository links with the Jaunty distribution (that is Ubuntu 9.04). Your can connect yours to any other, like Debians experimental repository.
My repository is accessible over the web, so I installed it on my web server:
user@box:~$ cd /var/www/
user@box:/var/www$ sudo mkdir packages
user@box:/var/www$ cd packages/
In this /var/www/packages we will create a pool, the 'jaunty' distribution and the cache directories:
user@box:/var/www/packages$ sudo mkdir -p pool/main
user@box:/var/www/packages$ sudo mkdir -p dists/jaunty/main/binary-i386
user@box:/var/www/packages$ sudo mkdir .cache
Now two files need to be created. The first one is the apt-release.conf. Make sure that it looks like:
APT::FTPArchive::Release::Codename "jaunty";
APT::FTPArchive::Release::Origin "elevenbits.com";
APT::FTPArchive::Release::Components "main";
APT::FTPArchive::Release::Label "ElevenBits Ubuntu Repository";
APT::FTPArchive::Release::Architectures "i386";
APT::FTPArchive::Release::Suite "jaunty;
The second file is called apt-ftparchive.conf. This one should look like:
Dir {
ArchiveDir ".";
CacheDir "./.cache";
};
Default {
Packages::Compress ". gzip bzip2";
Contents::Compress ". gzip bzip2";
};
TreeDefault {
BinCacheDB "packages-$(SECTION)-$(ARCH).db";
Directory "pool/$(SECTION)";
Packages "$(DIST)/$(SECTION)/binary-$(ARCH)/Packages";
Contents "$(DIST)/Contents-$(ARCH)";
};
Tree "dists/jaunty" {
Sections "main";
Architectures "i386";
}
After you'd created these file your system should look like this:
user@box:/var/www/packages$ ls -al
total 28
drwxr-xr-x 5 root root 4096 Aug 14 13:32 .
drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 4096 Aug 14 13:22 ..
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Aug 14 13:26 .cache
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 427 Aug 14 13:32 apt-ftparchive.conf
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 282 Aug 14 13:30 apt-release.conf
drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 4096 Aug 14 13:26 dists
drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 4096 Aug 14 13:26 pool
Here the yourpackage package version 1.0 is copied into the new (empty) repository:
user@box:~$ cd /var/www/packages/pool/main
user@box:/var/www/packages/pool/main$ sudo cp ~/yourpackage_1.0_all.deb .
Now the repo needs to be initialized. This you can do using these commands:
user@box:~$ cd /var/www/packages
user@box:/var/www/packages$ sudo apt-ftparchive generate apt-ftparchive.conf
pool/main: 1 files 9900B 0s
Done Packages, Starting contents.
dists/jaunty/Contents-i386: 1 files 9900B 0s
Done. 9900B in 1 archives. Took 0s
user@box:/var/www/packages$ apt-ftparchive -c apt-release.conf release dists/jaunty | sudo tee dists/jaunty/Release
Architectures: i386
Codename: jaunty
Components: main
Date: Mon, 17 Aug 2009 14:16:41 UTC
Label: ElevenBits Ubuntu Repository
Origin: elevenbits.com
Suite: jaunty
MD5Sum:
1d25efc884e5bbfc32eeba74771e322e 536 main/binary-i386/Packages
574c2e304fb14272b8f70355e93fbe80 416 main/binary-i386/Packages.bz2
3a0cbc2e4a38e40c8182451c85de1251 390 main/binary-i386/Packages.gz
SHA1:
949b9e9045f7698cd64abd4c1fa2261eb5d22f82 536 main/binary-i386/Packages
6d5d5c841a8890b4491650f4f360d53158d16cc0 416 main/binary-i386/Packages.bz2
eda59ba70dc9e9d65cf92076e33cb589a07de564 390 main/binary-i386/Packages.gz
SHA256:
b30b4e68d8928785d132dbdc6bb4158e75e907e07f00a3b8d206030236b8f94a 536 main/binary-i386/Packages
38b855ab6e0ce3111f986f26347871827e5e461af9b29b8ccf12773560f63caf 416 main/binary-i386/Packages.bz2
1d1aec4f2cff1a3b71212083aabfc3f2003c88b70f1f0a2ef32bfbb94c2aa879 390 main/binary-i386/Packages.gz
After this, the repository is ready to be used. See http://localhost/packages to make sure.
Remember to re-initialize the repo each time the /var/www/packages is altered.
On the Ubuntu machines that need access to your repository, use
sudo vim /etc/apt/sources.list
to add in the repository address:
deb http://ww.xx.yy.zz/packages jaunty main
where ww.xx.yy.zz is the address where your server lives.
From now on the system has access to our own private repository. Cool, no?