Creating Ubuntu Repository

Right now, i'm trying to build a Ubuntu repository for my campus. It's a challenging task, as i have never tried this before. I am able to create Slackware repository since it can be done using a script or plain rsync command, but in Ubuntu, the situation is not that simple. It has so many parameter which should be set, unlike Slackware, which only need one parameter (the version).

At first, i used apt-mirror, but it's not customizeable enough so in the end i abandon them. Next, i asked the maintainer of Kambing, one of the biggest online repository in Indonesia and he told me about debmirror. I tried to use this and yes, it's very customizeable. I can download only the selected architecture, something that is not yet supported in other application i tried before. It saves so many spaces, since the repository itself is very huge.

A full Lucid repository would take approximately 60 GB and by filtering the packages to selected ones, i can reduce it to around 30 GB. That's 50% reduction which is very nice efforts.

Let's hope the mirror can be launched and used before Lucid Lynx is introduced in the end of this month