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How to save time and traffic upgrading with apt-proxy
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APT-SPY(8) System Manager's Manual APT-SPY(8) NAME
apt-spy - program to generate a /etc/apt/sources.list.d/apt-spy.list file SYNOPSIS
apt-spy -d distribution [ -a area ] [ -c config ] [ -e number ] [ -f file ] [ -i file ] [ -m mirror-list ] [ -o output-file ] [ -p proxy ] [ -s country-list ] [ -t time ] [ -u update-URL ] [ -w file ] [ -n number ] [ -h ] [ -v ] [ update ] DESCRIPTION
This manual page briefly documents the apt-spy command. apt-spy is a program that tests all of the Debian archive mirrors the user specifies for bandwith and writes, by default, to /etc/apt/sources.list.d/apt-spy.list the fastest server. The user can select which of the many Debian sites to benchmark by geographical location. apt-spy does not need to be run by root if the user provides a configuration file, a place where to store the mirror list and an output file. See examples for more details. OPTIONS
-d distribution Debian distribution to use. Sensible values would be `stable', `testing' or `unstable'. Distribution names can also be used. This value is directly used in the generated sources.list, and is required unless updating. -a area This will cause only servers in the specified area to be benchmarked. By default, valid values for area are `Africa', `Asia', `Europe', `North-America', `Oceania' and `South-America'. It is very easy to define your own areas or subset of servers to bench- mark. For further details see apt-spy.conf(5). -c config configuration file to use instead of /etc/apt-spy.conf. -e number `early finish'. Stop benchmarking after number of servers have been completed. Act as if all servers were benchmarked upon comple- tion. -f file file to grab from the Debian servers. By default apt-spy will test the servers by getting part of the `ls-lR' file in the base of the Debian tree on the mirror. This tells apt-spy to get file instead. It is assumed that this file is also relative to the Debian base directory. -i file use file as input for apt-spy. You should generate this input file using the -w option. -m mirror-list where to load the mirrors list from or where to save it to. The default location is /var/lib/apt-spy/mirrors.txt. Using this option allows you to specify a different location. When updating, this defines where the updated mirrors list will be saved. -o output-file location for the new sources.list. By default the new file is created as /etc/apt/sources.list. -p proxy use proxy as a proxy server. This should be specified as `hostname:port'. -s country-list A comma-separated list of countries to benchmark. At the moment, this cannot be used with the "area" option. -t time how long (approximately) in seconds to download for. By default time is 15 seconds. How long the benchmark actually downloads for varies due to the way libcurl works. With the default 15 seconds, the benchmark generally takes beween 10 and 25 seconds. Each server has potentially two protocols (ftp and http) so roughly one minute per server would be a reasonable estimate of how long it should take. Be aware that this does vary considerably, and that benchmarking any more than a very few servers takes considerable time (possibly several hours for `-a All'). -u update-URL specify custom URL to get an updated mirrors list from. This can be http, ftp, file, or any other URL type supported by libcurl. -w file write a number of top servers to file in a format suitable for use with the -i option. The number of servers to output can be speci- fied with the -n option, and defaults to 5. -n number the number of top servers to write with the -w option. update connect to http.us.debian.org and download the mirror list to /var/lib/apt-spy/mirrors.txt. The -u or -m options may be used to respectively specify a different URL for the mirrors list or a different location for the downloaded file. -v output a version number. -h print a short usage message. EXAMPLES
Non root usage: apt-spy -d stable -a Europe -m ./mirror.txt -o apt-spy.list -c apt-spy.conf Above command tests European mirrors for stable Debian release saving http://http.us.debian.org/debian/README.mirrors.txt into mirror.txt, writing source file into apt-spy.list using configuration from apt-spy.conf. Note that not root users need to specified all these parame- ters. Updating mirror list file: apt-spy update Creating the /etc/apt/sources.list.d/apt-spy.list file: apt-spy -d stable SEE ALSO
sources.list(5), apt-spy.conf(5), apt(8). AUTHOR
apt-spy and this manual page was written by Steven Holmes <steg@bsdeviant.org> and updated by Stefano Canepa <sc@linux.it>. The original version of apt-spy was written by Danny Rodriguez <messiah@optonline.net>. This version is a total rewrite. 17th December, 2011 APT-SPY(8)
