How to share packages with other ubuntu systems via apt-cacher-ng

I have a host Ubuntu 13.10 system in which I am installing packages via

apt-get install

Now there are many virtual machines which run on top of this host machine.

I want these virtual machines to install from already downloaded packages by the host machine and skip going to the internet first to save my time.

I want to share only which I need and I want to download only once in my host machine.

Solution:

apt-cacher-ng

This creates a proxy that packages are downloaded only once and all machines can quickly download from it.

Here are the install steps

On my base host machine where i want to create apt-cacher-ng proxy

sudo apt-get install apt-cacher-ng

Open the browser to see that its installed successfuly

http://myip:3142

For me its

http://nanak-p570wm:3142

Now i all client machines including the host machine tell them to use proxy to get the packages

touch /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/01proxy

cat > /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/01proxy <<EOF
Acquire::http { Proxy "http://nanak-P570WM:3142"; };
Acquire::ftp { Proxy "ftp://nanak-P570WM:3142"; };
EOF

Thats it , try to test by downloading few things and see the magic


References

http://linuxexpresso.wordpress.com/2011/02/13/howto-apt-cacher-ng-on-ubuntu/
http://www.ubuntugeek.com/apt-cacher-ng-http-download-proxy-for-software-packages.html