Switched On Tech Design

Tag: apt

  • Debian: How to see what has recently been upgraded or updated through apt-get

    Forgotten what it was you last updated, or want to check what someone else has been updating? There’s a log file for that, and it’s located at:

     

    /var/log/apt/history.log

     

    To view it, run:

     

    less /var/log/apt/history.log

     

    Looking for an older logfile? They’re kept, too. To see the other log files available, view the directory using ls:

     

    ls /var/log/apt/

     

    It should look something like:

     

    history.log  history.log.1.gz  history.log.2.gz  history.log.3.gz  history.log.4.gz  term.log  term.log.1.gz  term.log.2.gz  term.log.3.gz  term.log.4.gz

     

    One further note – This will show the most recent things done with apt, not just upgrades.

  • How to cache yum repositories on CentOS using apt-cacher-ng on Debian or Ubuntu

     

    If you have a lot of virtual (or real) machines running Debian or Ubuntu and a limited internet connection, it can make a lot of sense to use apt-cacher-ng to create a local cache of the packages you use so that they are only downloaded once. The current version of apt-cacher-ng can also help out with yum repositories!

     

    On CentOS, edit /etc/yum.conf and add:

     

    proxy=http://[ip-of-your-local-apt-cacher-ng-server]:3142

     

    If you have changed the default port of apt-cacher-ng from 3142, you will need to modify that. Our example file:

     

    [main]
    cachedir=/var/cache/yum/$basearch/$releasever
    keepcache=0
    debuglevel=2
    logfile=/var/log/yum.log
    exactarch=1
    obsoletes=1
    gpgcheck=1
    plugins=1
    installonly_limit=5
    bugtracker_url=http://bugs.centos.org/set_project.php?project_id=16&ref=http://bugs.centos.org/bug_report_page.php?category=yum
    distroverpkg=centos-release
    proxy=http://10.1.1.12:3142

    #  This is the default, if you make this bigger yum won’t see if the metadata
    # is newer on the remote and so you’ll “gain” the bandwidth of not having to
    # download the new metadata and “pay” for it by yum not having correct
    # information.
    #  It is esp. important, to have correct metadata, for distributions like
    # Fedora which don’t keep old packages around. If you don’t like this checking
    # interupting your command line usage, it’s much better to have something
    # manually check the metadata once an hour (yum-updatesd will do this).
    # metadata_expire=90m

    # PUT YOUR REPOS HERE OR IN separate files named file.repo
    # in /etc/yum.repos.d

     

    As you can see, our local apt-cacher-ng VM is 10.1.1.12.

     

    Run yum update and check your apt-cacher-ng’s cache – you should now see some CentOS respositories cached there.