How to create CRAN mirror

We wanted to setup local copy of cran to speed up installs of packages behind the corporate proxy.

Following instructions given on website.

Create simple script

Install Apache http server

sync.sh has contents

rsync -rvCtL --delete --include="*.tar.gz" --include="PACKAGES*" --exclude="*/*" cran.r-project.org::CRAN/src/contrib /var/www/cran

Above script just deletes all the old packges , copies new ones into folder /var/www/cran

You can choose any other location

Rsync used to stop many times due to connection or other issues so i just added it in loop , if exist is not clean run again

call.sh has contents

./sync.sh
while [ $? -ne 0 ]; do
    ./sync.sh
done


Now just schedule the script call.sh via cron to run at regular intervals , the official website say to run every 2 days.

http://cran.r-project.org/mirror-howto.html

You can now use the above location in contrib url for R packages