Guide for setting up http-replicator, a download cache (proxy) for Ubuntu packages

http-replicator is a powerful Python-based proxy or download cache capable of caching any traffic over http. It's best when used for a network of Ubuntu machines, saving bandwidth and increasing the speed with which updates are obtained by all machines.

NOTE: The deb available from the freshmeat & gertjan.freezope.org page for this package is older then the one here, so please use the one given below.

http-replicator_4.0~alpha2-0tikhonov4~trusty_all.deb'
wget https://launchpad.net/~tikhonov/+archive/ubuntu/http-replicator/+build/5924499/+files/http-replicator_4.0%7Ealpha2-0tikhonov4%7Etrusty_all.deb
sudo dpkg -i http-replicator_4.0~alpha2-0tikhonov4~trusty_all.deb

Now, to configure the proxy, open up the config file with

sudo sensible-editor /etc/default/http-replicator

Look at the line

DAEMON_OPTS="$GENERAL_OPTS --port 8080 --log /var/log/http-replicator.log --user proxy"

And change it to

DAEMON_OPTS="$GENERAL_OPTS --port 8080 --log /var/log/http-replicator.log --user proxy --ip=192.168.0.*"

--ip=192.168.0.*is whatever network address space your using.

Its probably worth noting that ? and * are wildcards supported by http-replicator. You can make it accept connections from one host (or multiple hosts if you use --ip= more then once) or an entire subnet (as above).

The other change you might like to do is change the port to 80. What this will do is make http-replicator cache all web trafic, without requiring you to reconfigure any client settings at all. Your resultant line will look something like:

DAEMON_OPTS="$GENERAL_OPTS --port 80 --log /var/log/http-replicator.log --user proxy --ip=192.168.0.*"

Save the file and exit.

Restart the daemon (or start for the first time)

sudo /etc/init.d/http-replicator restart

And you're finished with the proxy!

Now, all you have to do is get the clients ready. Note that if you changed the port http-replicator runs on to port 80, the following is unneeded. (The example given below is for proxying packages downloaded by APT).

On the local computer you want to use http-replicator with, add this line to /etc/apt/apt.conf

Acquire::http::Proxy "http://192.168.0.1:8080";

Replace 192.168.0.1 with the IP of the server http-replicator is running on.

More info:


man 1 http-replicator
man 1 http-replicator_maintenance
http://gertjan.freezope.org/replicator/
http://freshmeat.net/projects/http-replicator/
https://sourceforge.net/projects/http-replicator/
https://launchpad.net/~tikhonov/+archive/ubuntu/http-replicator/+build/5924499

For the record, the following files are installed by the .deb

./
usr/
usr/share/
usr/share/doc/
usr/share/doc/http-replicator/
usr/share/doc/http-replicator/README.gz
usr/share/doc/http-replicator/copyright
usr/share/doc/http-replicator/examples/
usr/share/doc/http-replicator/examples/apt.conf
usr/share/doc/http-replicator/changelog.gz
usr/share/man/
usr/share/man/man1/
usr/share/man/man1/http-replicator.1.gz
usr/share/man/man1/http-replicator_maintenance.1.gz
usr/bin/
usr/bin/http-replicator
usr/bin/http-replicator_maintenance
etc/
etc/logrotate.d/
etc/logrotate.d/http-replicator
etc/default/
etc/default/http-replicator
etc/init.d/
etc/init.d/http-replicator
etc/cron.weekly/
etc/cron.weekly/http-replicator


CategoryInternet CategoryNetworking

HttpReplicator (last edited 2014-07-30 08:58:50 by 91-65-32-31-dynip)