pkgproxy is a caching proxy server specifically designed for caching Arch GNU/Linux packages for pacman.

Updating multiple Arch systems in your home network can be a slow process if you have to download every pkg file for every machine over and over again. One could setup a local Arch Linux mirror, but it takes a considerable amount of disk space (~60GB). Instead why not just cache packages you really downloaded on one machine since it’s highly likely that other computers will need to update the same packages. That’s exactly what pkgproxy does. It relays pacmans HTTP requests and saves a copy to disk so that future requests of the same file can be served from the local cache.

Installation

From source

go get -u git.buckket.org/buckket/pkgproxy

Packet manager

• Arch Linux: pkgproxy^AUR

Usage

Update your clients mirror list (/etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist) to point to pkgproxy:

Server = http://${HOST_WITH_PKGPROXY_RUNNING}:8080/$repo/os/$arch

Run pkgproxy manually or use a systemd service file (example provided):

Usage:
  pkgproxy [options]

  Options:
    -cache string
        Cache base path (default: $XDG_CACHE_HOME)
    -keep-cache bool
        Keep the cache between restarts
    -port string
        Listen on addr (default ":8080")
    -upstream string
        Upstream URL (default "https://mirrors.kernel.org/archlinux/$repo/os/$arch")
    -version bool
        Show version information

Limitations

• Multiple incoming requests of the same file are handled sequentially, which may cause pacman to timeout, especially if a large file is being downloaded.
• All cached files are deleted when pkgproxy exits. No files will be deleted by pkgproxy as long as it is running. If you want to limit disk usage create a systemd timer which deletes files older than x days.

License

GNU GPLv3+