How do I set up a ROS mirror?

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To do this, begin by installing apt-mirror on your Ubuntu system.

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install apt-mirror

Then edit the mirror.list (/etc/apt/mirror.list) file so that the ROS repositories will be mirrored, here is an example for both x86 and amd64 systems.

############# config ##################                                                                                                                                                                              
#
# set base_path    /var/spool/apt-mirror
#
# set mirror_path  $base_path/mirror
# set skel_path    $base_path/skel
# set var_path     $base_path/var
# set cleanscript $var_path/clean.sh
# set defaultarch  <running host architecture>
# set postmirror_script $var_path/postmirror.sh
# set run_postmirror 0
set nthreads     20
set _tilde 0
#
############# end config ##############

#deb http://packages.ros.org/ros/ubuntu jaunty main
deb http://packages.ros.org/ros/ubuntu karmic main
deb http://packages.ros.org/ros/ubuntu lucid main
deb http://packages.ros.org/ros/ubuntu maverick main

#deb-i386 http://packages.ros.org/ros/ubuntu jaunty main
deb-i386 http://packages.ros.org/ros/ubuntu karmic main                                                                                                                                                              
deb-i386 http://packages.ros.org/ros/ubuntu lucid main
deb-i386 http://packages.ros.org/ros/ubuntu maverick main

Once apt-mirror is set up, you can mirror the repository by running the command:

sudo su - apt-mirror -c apt-mirror

This may take a while the first time that you run it. This will download a copy of the ROS repository to /var/spool/apt-mirror by default.

You can now set up Apache to point to the mirror so that it is accessible through http.

As an example, here is my Apache configuration (/etc/apache2/sites-available/mirror.<+YOURDOMAIN+>.com)

<VirtualHost *:80>                                                                                                                                                                                                   
    ServerName mirror.<+YOURDOMAIN+>.com
    ServerAlias www.mirror.<+YOURDOMAIN+>.com
    ServerAdmin XXXXXXX@ieee.org
    DocumentRoot "/var/www/mirror.<+YOURDOMAIN+>.com"

    ErrorLog /var/log/apache2/mirror.<+YOURDOMAIN+>.com/error_log

     <Directory "/var/www/mirror.<+YOURDOMAIN+>.com">
            Options +Indexes
            Order allow,deny
            Allow from all
    </Directory>


    <IfModule log_config_module>
            TransferLog /var/log/apache2/mirror.<+YOURDOMAIN+>.com/access_log
    </IfModule>
</VirtualHost>

Then you may enable the site and create a symlink to the apt-mirror directory:

sudo a2ensite mirror.<+YOURDOMAIN+>.com
sudo ln -s /var/spool/apt-mirror/mirror/code.ros.org /var/www/mirror.<+YOURDOMAIN+>.com/archive-ros

Your mirror will be available at http://mirror.<+YOURDOMAIN+>.com/archive-ros/

You can add it to your local apt repository using the following command:

sudo sh -c '. /etc/lsb-release && echo "deb http://mirror.<+YOURDOMAIN+>.com/archive-ros/packages/ros/ubuntu $DISTRIB_CODENAME main" > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/ros-latest.list'

And then follow the rest of the ROS install guide.

It also helps to set up a cron task to keep the repository synced, do this by uncommenting the line in /etc/cron.d/apt-mirror

#                                                                                                                                                                                                                    
# Regular cron jobs for the apt-mirror package
#
0 4 * * *   apt-mirror  /usr/bin/apt-mirror > /var/spool/apt-mirror/var/cron.log