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https://github.com/tatsuhiro-t/apt-metalink

Make 'apt-get' faster by downloading Debian/Ubuntu packages from multiple servers concurrently.
https://github.com/tatsuhiro-t/apt-metalink

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Make 'apt-get' faster by downloading Debian/Ubuntu packages from multiple servers concurrently.

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apt-metalink

============



apt-metalink makes 'apt-get' faster by downloading Debian/Ubuntu

packages from several servers concurrently. apt-metalink uses

python3-apt to interface apt infrastructure and aria2 for download

backend. Metalink is used to feed package list to aria2.



If multiple debian mirror is specified in /etc/apt/sources.list,

packages are usually available in more than one server.  apt-get only

uses 1 URI to download package in sequential manner.  apt-metalink

uses the advantage of availability of these mirrors.  apt-metalink

establishes 1 connection per mirror and downloads packages from all

mirrors in sources.list. This is as if running apt-get with different

mirror and mutually exclusive subset of packages at the same time.

This parallelism shortens whole download time. The difference of

parallel transfer and sequential transfer gets bigger when the number

of packages to download increases.  The connection to the remote

server is reused across the download, so it is very efficient.



Prerequisites

-------------



apt-metalink uses aria2 as download backend.

You can install aria2 with following command:



---------------------

apt-get install aria2

---------------------



I strongly recommend to use the latest release of aria2.  You can

download aria2 from https://aria2.github.io/



apt-metalink also depends on python3-apt package.

You can install python-apt with following command:



---------------------------

apt-get install python3-apt

---------------------------



But I think it is usually already in your system.  If you see that

apt-metalink reports there are packages to update but the total size

is 0 byte, then it is a sign that python3-apt needs to be updated.

Please update python3-apt first in this case.



Edit sources.list

-----------------



sources.list is ususally located at /etc/apt/sources.list.  Add

several fast debian mirror server to it.  Don't add slow mirror. It

voids the power of apt-metalink.  For example, adding 3 debian mirror:



---------------------------------------------------------

deb http://MIRROR1/debian/ unstable main contrib non-free

deb http://MIRROR2/debian/ unstable main contrib non-free

deb http://MIRROR3/debian/ unstable main contrib non-free

---------------------------------------------------------



See sources.list(5) for more details.



apt-metalink uses them all and download packages concurrently, which

makes download faster.



Currently, apt-metalink passes the number of mirrors as -j option to

aria2c.



Usage

-----



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

  Usage: apt-metalink [options] {upgrade | dist-upgrade | install pkg ...}



  Options:

    -h, --help            show this help message and exit

    -d, --download-only   Download only. [default: False]

    --print-metalink      Instead of fetching the files, Metalink XML document

                          is printed. Metalink XML document contains package's

                          URIs and checksums.

    --hash-check          Check hash of already downloaded files. If hash check

                          fails, download file again.

    -x ARIA2C, --aria2c=ARIA2C

                          path to aria2c executable [default: /usr/bin/aria2c]

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------



Currently, apt-metalink offers very basic subset of features that

apt-get has: upgrade, dist-upgrade and install. But I think this is

enough to see what apt-metalink offers and its possibility.



License

-------



GPLv3



References

----------



 * https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=500653

 * https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/apt/+bug/275994

 * https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5854 The Metalink Download Description Format

 * https://aria2.github.io/ aria2 project