Adept Updater With Lan Sources Can I specify a software package source on my own LAN?

[travstatesmen 0]

I really like the software distribution model that GNU/Linux uses. The whole idea of a universal updater for all software, whether it be the operating system itself or the applications, can all be centrally administered and updated through programs like Adept Updater. Adept just checks automatically for new updates for all software that you have installed and lets you know if a particular program has an update. You can then choose to apply the selected updates and it will download and install the updates for you. Brilliant!

But here is my question. If I have a lot of computers on a LAN all running the same version of the same GNU/Linux distro and with the same GUI interface, can I get them to look at a local source first for updates? For instance, I would like to have one machine (the LAN source) downloading the common updates with Adept, and then making the downloaded packages available for other computers (the LAN clients) on the LAN to download the updates locally from, rather than each machine using my Internet bandwidth to download the same updates. Then, for anything else that is not available from the LAN source the workstations can access the Internet directly to download their own needs. Different hardware configurations, for instance, would require different driver downloads.

I would imagine that for such a thing to work smoothly there would need to be a schedule maintained, so that the LAN source would perform its own download first, and then the other LAN clients would poll the LAN source for updates, otherwise the LAN clients would not find the necessary updates available on the LAN source.

Does anybody know if this is possible to configure under Kubuntu (Ubuntu v8.04 with KDE v3.5.9) and using Adept Updater v2.1 Cruiser?

[truefusion 3]

Yes, it's possible to do that; many companies that run Linux do that. You'd have to set up your own Debian repository on the central computer. Then on the beneficiaries, edit their sources.list file to include the LAN source. These links should help:
http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/
http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/

[travstatesmen 0]

That is awesome! Thanks for the quick reply truefusion. I put the question up on the KDE forums as well, but you were the first to reply to me. I will get on to reading through it all and then implementing it, and I'll let you know how I got on. I will probably look at getting more of my support infrastructure in place first, such as setting up a local DNS server and a local FTP server, as I would like the sources.list files on my clients to point to an ftp site on my network rather than a local file. I still have a lot of learning and implementing to do before I can say that my GNU/Linux installation is equal to or better than my old Windows 2000 Server-based home network, but I'm getting there slowly.