peer-to-peer proxy to speed apt downloads in Ubuntu with Apt-P2P

Apt-P2P is a peer-to-peer proxy for apt downloads. Similar to DebTorrent, Apt-P2P will act as a proxy between apt requests and a debian repository server, downloading any requested files from peers (if possible), but falling back to a direct HTTP download. Unlike DebTorrent, Apt-P2P will be simple, efficient, and fast.

Features

• Downloads from peers, increasing the available bandwidth to the user
• Reduces the bandwidth requirements needed to setup a repository of packages
• Seamlessly integrates with the current APT tool
• Automatically falls back to downloading from an HTTP mirror when peers are not available
• Builds on other already existing tools where possible
• Fast and requires limited CPU and memory
• Will try to download any file it can find a hash for from peers (including Packages.bz2, Sources.gz, …)

This software is open-source and is released at no charge under the terms of the GPL v2 license.

Install and setup apt-p2p

1.) First, install the dependences:

sudo apt-get install python python-apt python-twisted python-twisted-web2

2.) Then install apt-p2p using:

sudo apt-get install apt-p2p

3.) Backup and configure the source.list:

sudo cp /etc/apt/sources.list /etc/apt/sources.list.backup
sudo sed -i 's%http://%http://localhost:9977/%g' /etc/apt/sources.list

4.) edit apt-p2p configuration file:

gksudo gedit /etc/apt-p2p/apt-p2p.conf

here you can change the UDP port, upload bandwidth, peers, cache dir, and so on.

5.) If there’s a firewall or route, set to allow 9967 and 9977.

6.) Restart apt-p2p service to apply change:

sudo rm -rf /var/cache/apt-p2p/cache/*
sudo /etc/init.d/apt-p2p restart

Now, you can use apt-get command to install packages or update system as apt-p2p fully integrated.

BTW: If you change mind and want to unistall apt-p2p or something’s messed up, use following command to restore:

sudo apt-get remove --purge apt-p2p
sudo cp /etc/apt/sources.list.backup /etc/apt/sources.list
sudo rm -rf /var/cache/apt-p2p/*
sudo apt-get update

This is a rewrite of the original tutorial in Chinese.

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