• install Ubuntu on your computer. People from Ubuntu-fr and Toulibre will be delighted to help you in installing our favourite OS.
• Assist to conference about Ubuntu and FOSS in general.
• Talk about Ubuntu and FOSS
• Buy goodies

I will give three presentations (damn, I have to finish my slides!): “What’s New in Ubuntu 8.10″, “Ubuntu at Home and at Work” and “Contributing to Ubuntu” with Christophe (Ubuntu-fr president). I will post my the slides when they are ready and photos.

You can find on Toulibre website all the details about the event.

Hope to see you on saturday!

• Figures: you can find attached to this post a screenshot of our report page (you can get a similar page on http://your_cacher:3142/report.html). As you can see, we have avoided around 140 MB. We have around 40 servers running Ubuntu and around 40 desktops/laptops running diffent Ubuntu flavours (Ubuntu/Kubuntu/Xubuntu).
• Feeling: More than figures, apt-cacher is a nice tool to use: you do not wait anymore your downloads. It’s often in the local cache. Applying kernel security update does not mean anymore to wait for downloads. You downlard your kernel around 30MB/s!

We have no regrets in the short time investment we made on installing and configuring this tool. We may have a look in the future on apt-cacher-ng, but now, everything is running well.

regex ^http://((.*)archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/(dists|pool)/.*(deb|bz2|Release|Release.gpg))$ http://apt-cacher:3142/\1
regex ^http://(security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/(dists|pool)/.*(deb|bz2|Release|Release.gpg))$ http://apt-cacher:3142/\1

Thanks Jerôme!

Some search gave:

• local mirror: huch… this is a bit too much for us
• squid usage: good, but you need to tweak too much your squid installation to keep your .deb inside the pool. And squid can make .deb expires even they are still valid.
• apt-proxy/apt-cacher/apt-cacher-ng: all looks good but… you have to modify your client configuration. As I am lazy, I don’t want to do that (and also, because I have mobile users who only want to use the cache when they are on the corporate network). Between the three, I chose apt-cacher, just based on some reading on the web… Other may be as good as apt-cacher!

We selected the association: squid + apt-cacher + jesred. Let’s have a look on each component:

• apt-cacher: .deb and Packages/Source cache. You can also import data from another source (for exemple from a cd-rom).
• squid: THE proxy, we use it as a transparent proxy in our case.
• jesred: rewrite squid URL and redirect access to the Ubuntu archive to apt-cacher.

The installation described below was made on a Ubuntu 8.04. The machine is a Xen virtual machine (I’ll talk about Xen another time ;-)). All the softwares are taken from Ubuntu repositories: squid beeing in main, other packages are in universe (ensure universe is enabled). Installation and configuration is really easy!

squid installation

# apt-get install squid

squid configuration

Edit /etc/squid.conf and add in ACL definititions:
acl mylan src 10.0.0.0/255.255.0.0

Allow traffic from you network:
http_access allow mylan

You can now test your squid. It should be operational.

apt-cacher installation

# apt-get install apt-cacher

I just changed the admin_email value in /etc/apt-cacher/apt-cacher.conf

As a quick test, set http_proxy env value and try to use apt. Everything should go throught the cache (check the logs).

jesred installation

# apt-get install jesred

jesred configuration

Edit /etc/jesred.acl to authorize your network (just add you lan at the end of the file).

Edit /etc/jesred.rules and add:
regex ^http://((.*)archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/(dists|pool)/.*)$    http://localhost:3142/\1
regex ^http://(security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/(dists|pool)/.*)$    http://localhost:3142/\1

I have also added two aborts in order to use upgrade-manager:
abort .gpg
abort ReleaseAnnouncement

Last but not least, the glue between all the elements:

Edit /etc/squid.conf and add:
redirect_program /usr/lib/squid/jesred

Finished ! Now your squid redirect all requests to *archive.ubuntu.com and security.ubuntu.com to apt-cacher. Happy installation / upgrades!

I run 8.04 on my laptop and on my personal servers for several months now, and it run quite well. This bug on Ubuntu Kernel made my life at work a bit more difficult, but it should hopefully be fixed in 8.04.1 (due july 3rd).

Now, it’s time to be intrepid!

Canonical is pushing hard Ubuntu Server those days (a lot of cool specs have been written for hardy), and that’s a very good thing for the server platform!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vkMlCeDu-0c&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F6L51uZjaZU&feature=related

See the complete announce.

During gutsy cycle, Canonical have hired a bunch of people for taking care of the server platform. The team has been growing (thanks to the community), and we are now 78 members. This team is working hard to make Ubuntu Server rocks (well, it’s already rocks, but rocks more). First results have reached gutsy, there will be more for hardy, the next Ubuntu release (due in April) which will be a LTS (Long Term Support, which for the server team means 5 years).

Lot of people have been asking “Why I should use Ubuntu as a server, Ubuntu is a desktop distro?”. I remember Adam Conrad saying about differences between Debian and Ubuntu as a server : “Release schedule, LTS releases, commercial support from Canonical, and a different logo”. From my experience, I think it is an excellent summary of the advantages of Ubuntu.

If you’re looking into contributing or if you want to help us, reporting bug is a good starting point!