Setting up a personal debian repository

A Debian repository is a set of Debian packages organized in a special directory tree which also contains a few additional files containing indexes and checksums of the packages.

Background

If a user adds your repository to her /etc/apt/sources.list file, she can easily view and install all the packages available in it.
If your repository is listed in sources.list, apt-get will fetch the Packages.gz index if the binary packages are listed (with the deb keyword) and Sources.gz if the sources are listed (with the deb-src keyword).

Packages.gz contains the name, version, size, the short and the long description, and the dependencies of each package
Sources.gz contains the name, version and the build dependencies (the packages needed to build) of each package

Repositories can offer different packages for each supported distribution and for each of the supported architectures; apt will automatically fetch the right one for a user's machine, without her even having to know about all the different architectures.
It also allows grouping of your packages into components, just as Debian's packages are divided into main, non-free, contrib and so on.
Distributing the packages in many different directories can however become unmanageable.
It is also a waste of space and bandwidth, as there are many packages (for example documentation packages) which are the same for all architectures. In such cases, a possible solution is a pool. A pool is an additional directory under the repository root containing all packages (the binaries for all architectures, distributions, and components, and all the sources).

Set up

Reprepro makes it very easy to set up APT repositories that use a common /pool directory to store all the package files.

Repositories will go under /var/packages/ and it will be set up for the Ubuntu Gutsy distribution.
The directory /var/packages/ubuntu/ is going to be the base of the Ubuntu repository.

root@host:/var# mkdir packages;cd packages
root@host:/var/packages# mkdir ubuntu;cd ubuntu
root@host:/var/packages/ubuntu# mkdir conf;cd conf
root@host:/var/packages/ubuntu/conf# vi distributions

inside this file put:

Origin: Ians
Label: Ians Personal Debs
Codename: gutsy
Architectures: i386 amd64 source lpia
Components: main
Description: Ians Personal Debian Repository
SignWith: yes
DebOverride: override.gutsy
DscOverride: override.gutsy

The Origin, Label and Description field can be filled with whatever you want.
The Codename is the specific distribution/version that this block of settings applies to. In this case it's gutsy.
The Architectures can be any of the 11 debian builds for and the Components can be of your choosing such as main non-free contrib and so on.
SignWith indicates that you want to create a Release.gpg file, creating a signed APT repository.
The DebOverride and DscOverride fields tell reprepro what files to use for the override rules. Override rules can be used to override .deb and .dsc configuration fields. Now create an options file:

root@host:/var/packages/ubuntu/conf# vi options

inside this file put:

verbose
ask-passphrase
basedir .

(ask-passphrase is used if you created a signed repo)

root@host:/var/packages/ubuntu/conf# cd ..
root@host:/var/packages/ubuntu/# mkdir override;cd override
root@host:/var/packages/ubuntu/override# touch gutsy.override

this creates the override file if we need to use it later.

Adding a deb

root@host:/var/packages/ubuntu# $ reprepro includedeb

so for my repo I did:

root@host:/var/packages/ubuntu# $ reprepro includedeb gutsy /home/debs/liferea_1.4.4-0ubuntu4_i386.deb

(notice the full path to the deb itself) More info about adding/removing debs and general repo 'good practice' is here

Setting up Apache

I am running mod_python so I control which urls are served with python or apache using apache's httpd.conf. First of all, make an Alias to the repository

root@host:/var/packages/ubuntu# cd /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/
root@host:/etc/apache2/sites-enabled# vi 000-default

this file should look like (the part below and including Alias /packages/ "/var/packages/" ) :

NameVirtualHost *
<VirtualHost *>
	ServerAdmin webmaster@localhost
	
	DocumentRoot /var/www/
	<Directory />
		Options FollowSymLinks
		AllowOverride None
	</Directory>
	<Directory /var/www/>
		Options Indexes FollowSymLinks MultiViews
		AllowOverride None
		Order allow,deny
		allow from all
		# This directive allows us to have apache2's default start page
                # in /apache2-default/, but still have / go to the right place
                #RedirectMatch ^/$ /apache2-default/
	</Directory>

	ScriptAlias /cgi-bin/ /usr/lib/cgi-bin/
	<Directory "/usr/lib/cgi-bin">
		AllowOverride None
		Options +ExecCGI -MultiViews +SymLinksIfOwnerMatch
		Order allow,deny
		Allow from all
	</Directory>

	ErrorLog /var/log/apache2/error.log

	# Possible values include: debug, info, notice, warn, error, crit,
	# alert, emerg.
	LogLevel warn

	CustomLog /var/log/apache2/access.log combined
	ServerSignature On

    Alias /doc/ "/usr/share/doc/"
    <Directory "/usr/share/doc/">
        Options Indexes MultiViews FollowSymLinks
        AllowOverride None
        Order deny,allow
        Deny from all
        Allow from 127.0.0.0/255.0.0.0 ::1/128
    </Directory>
    Alias /packages/ "/var/packages/"
    <Directory "/var/packages">
        Options Indexes FollowSymLinks MultiViews
        DirectoryIndex index.html
        AllowOverride Options
        Order allow,deny
        allow from all
     </Directory>
     <Directory "/var/packages/*/conf">
        Order allow,deny
        Deny from all
        Satisfy all
     </Directory>
     <Directory "/var/packages/*/db">
        Order allow,deny
        Deny from all
        Satisfy all
      </Directory>        
</VirtualHost>

then add a SetHandler in httpd.conf to let apache handle the repo and not mod_python

root@host:/etc/apache2/sites-enabled# cd ..
root@host:/etc/apache2# vi httpd.conf


<location "/packages">
    SetHandler None
</location>

and restart apache (/etc/init.d/apache2 restart)

The repository is browsable at: http://<somehost.com>/packages/

To check out your debs using apt you need to add:

deb http://<somehost.com>/packages/ubuntu gutsy main
deb-src http://<somehost.com>/packages/ubuntu gutsy main

to /etc/apt/sources.list and do an apt-get update _____
tags: Debian|  Documentation|  Repository