How To Create A Local Debian/Ubuntu Mirror With apt-mirror (Howtoforge)

apt-cache has worked well for me for years, working with Debian. It's a virtual mirror, so it doesn't guarantee local speeds for every file, and in fact guarantees a slower download the *first* time you install any package. But if a mirror actually has any use, other than blotting up free space on a disk, you'll hit each of them more than once. And it's just as good, freshness-wise, as hitting the intertubes for security updates while still being faster (because locally cached) for the second and subsequent machines you install each update on.

With Ubuntu I haven't been using anything but a squid cache with a fair few GB and a large file size limit. I started out that way, figuring I'd move to a more targeted caching solution (apt-cache itself, maybe? don't know if there's anything in it that wouldn't work perfectly well with a Ubuntu repository), but the simple generic HTTP proxy gets so much of the benefit for practically zero effort that I haven't felt the need even though we're all using Ubuntu on the desktops and laptops now.

A full mirror is great - I rely on the folks who run them in a big-bandwidth public way. And they'd be a clear win on, say, a cruise liner that has high bandwidth to the world onlt sporadically, assuming it was a Linux installfest crusie or something. ;-) But most of the time, no.