[Sugar-devel] [DESIGN] Proposal: Contol-Panel packaging

[John Gilmore]

> We use yum to provide automatic updates to our XOs in the field, and
> we must be mindful that large RPMs can have an impact on the school's
> Internet connection. If 400 XOs need to download a ~800KB Sugar RPM,
> that's 320MB being downloaded, potentially at the same time.

Isn't there a cacheing yum proxy?  Yes, it turns out:

  http://terrarum.net/administration/caching-rpms-with-pkg-cacher.html

[Beware the install advice in that page.  It tells you to set gpgcheck=0
to install their packages -- rather than telling you where to get a
public key -- and it neglects to tell you to restore gpgcheck=1 after
you install pkg-cacher.]

Supposedly apt-cache can do it as well, though I don't see a step-by-step
guide:

  http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=482949

Once one of your local machines is running the proxy, then you point
each of the XOs to the proxy as well as to the standard RPM repos.  I
think yum is smart enough to download it from the first repo that
offers it, which means that if your cache is responding, it'll
download packages from there.  (Warning: I haven't done this myself.)

	John