Once you’ve bought a dual or quad Xeon and started to experiment with virtualization you will soon want to create your local mirror to make installs lightning fast. This is a step-by-step how i did it.

First create the Xen that will be our mirror server. The size requirements can be found here: Debian mirror sizes The combined size of amd64 architecture and architecture independent files was 39Gb on 1.9.2007. So I made the image 50Gb big. Remember to change this mirror to a location near you.

   1  xen-create-image --hostname=mirrors.aktagon.com \
   2  --size=50Gb --swap=256Mb --ip=10.0.0.44 \
   3  --netmask=255.255.255.0 --gateway=10.0.0.2 \
   4  --force --dir=/work/vserver --memory=256Mb \
   5  --arch=amd64 \
   6  --kernel=/boot/vmlinuz-2.6.18-5-xen-amd64 \
   7  --debootstrap --dist=etch \
   8  --mirror= http://ftp.fi.debian.org/debian/\
   9  --passwd

Then ssh into your new Xen as root.

   1  ssh -l root mirrors.aktagon.com

Make base configurations for a fresh Xen.

   1  apt-get update && apt-get install locales console-data && dpkg-reconfigure locales

Then get the mirror synchronization script from Debian.

   1  wget "http://www.debian.org/mirror/anonftpsync"
   2  chmod a+x anonftpsync 

Then install dependencies for anonftpsync script. Otherwise the script will fail with a -bash: lockfile: command not found error.

   1  apt-get install procmail

Install nginx.

   1  apt-get install nginx

Configure anonftpsync with your favorite editor and change the lines below. These settings will setup a mirror only for amd64 files. You could remove i386 from the excluded architectures, but then a 50Gb image won’t fit all the files.

   1  TO=/var/www/debian
   2  RSYNC_HOST=ftp.fi.debian.org
   3  RSYNC_DIR=debian
   4  LOGDIR=/var/log/mirroring
   5  ARCH_EXCLUDE="alpha arm hppa hurd-i386 i386 ia64 m68k mipsel mips powerpc s390 sh sparc source"

Make the log directory.

   1  mkdir -p /var/log/mirroring

Configure nginx by modifying /etc/nginx/nginx.conf with your favorite editor. Just add the autoindex line into server { location / { context

   1  # abbreviated start of file for clarity...
   2      server {
   3          listen       80;
   4          server_name  localhost;
   5  
   6          access_log  /var/log/nginx/localhost.access.log;
   7  
   8          location / {
   9              root   /var/www;
  10              # add the line below to allow directory listing
  11              autoindex  on;
  12              index  index.html index.htm;
  13          }
  14     # abbreviated end of file for clarity...

Do the synchronizing. And wait… for a long while. On a 8/1Mbit cable the first synchronize took roughly 20 hours.

   1  ./anonftpsync

Now modify your /etc/apt/sources.list on existing Xen images to use your local mirror. And remember to create new Xen images using your new mirror :) In the above case the URL is http://mirrors.aktagon.com/debian

NB: there is no public mirrors.aktagon.com available… sorry.

Jumpstart with Xen out-of-the-box in Debian Etch stable.

   1  sudo apt-get install xen-tools xen-hypervisor linux-image-xen-amd64 bridge-utils iproute sysfsutils
   2  # [reboot into xen kernel now]
   3  sudo xen-create-image --hostname=db2.aktagon.com \
   4  --size=10Gb --swap=256Mb --ip=10.0.0.51 \
   5  --netmask=255.255.255.0 --gateway=10.0.0.2 \
   6  --force --dir=/work/vserver --memory=512Mb \
   7  --arch=i386 --kernel=/boot/vmlinuz-2.6.18-5-xen-amd64 \
   8  --debootstrap --dist=etch \
   9  --mirror=http://ftp.funet.fi/pub/linux/mirrors/debian/ \
  10  --passwd
  11  sudo xm create /etc/xen/db1.aktagon.com.cfg