Re: How to merge multipel yum caches and cache portability

Phil Schaffner wrote:

On Mon, 2005-05-16 at 22:00 -0400, Arthur Pemberton wrote:

How would I go about merging the /var/cache/yum/ of multiple, up-to-date machines ? And how portable is this folder? Can I just copy it to another machine?

I just installed FC3, and haven't spend almost the entire day downloading updates. I going to install FC3 on another machien soon, which may or maynto eb attached to my network, so I would like to be able to just burn the cache to acdrom, adn then copy it to another machine.

Many ways to skin that cat (all equally odious to the cat).  Here's an
approach..

Assumptions:

1.  All machines are networked i386 arch machines (client1 .. client N).
2.  One is set up as an NFS server (lets call it server1), has exported
a filesystem (e.g /share) with room for all the updates, and you have
mounted it on all the clients as /share.

On all machines, create a file in /etc/yum.repos.d called local.repo
containing:

[local]
name=Fedora Local $releasever - $basearch
baseurl=file:/share/yum/fedora/$releasever/updates/$basearch/
enabled=1

On server1:
# mkdir -p /share/yum/fedora/3/updates/i386
# yum install createrepo
 (if not already there)

Start:
For X = 1 to N {

Log on to clientX.  Following is one logical line...

# rsync --archive --verbose /var/cache/yum/updates-released/packages/\
/share/yum/fedora/3/updates/i386

}

On server1:
# rsync --archive --verbose /var/cache/yum/updates-released/packages/\
/share/yum/fedora/3/updates/i386
# createrepo /share/yum/fedora/3/updates/i386

Run "yum update" on all machines.

GoTo Start

Will end up with obsolete files in the updates directory as time goes
on, but yum handles that OK.  Can do manual cleanup if space is tight.

Extensible to x86_64, ppc, etc.

Could also write files to removable media, consolidate on a CD, and
mount on each machine - just adjust the path in the [local] repo entry.
Can sync updates directory with a mirror server, rather than from each
machine, but you will likely be downloading things you won't need.

Phil

A few questions:
1) I am most interested in savign the files to a removable media such as cdrom: would I createrepo before or after coping to cd?
2) Do I adjust the yum congs to only have my repo? O do I just ad my repo and leave the others alone.
3) If I don't remove the other repos, how does yum know to take the package from the hdd/cdom, and not download it from the net?

Thanks for your time.