Questions

[famewolf]

I've installed your program on a desktop, two laptops and one virtualbox VM session on an Ubuntu Desktop. I have a few questions concerning the operation and this information might be worthwhile to add to the readme or a FAQ. I appreciate you making this program available and taking the time to review this.

1. The virtualbox VM uses NAT to make a private network between the host and the VM's...will the arch linux variant running in the VM(10.2.0.xx) communicate with other pc's that might be on a parent lan(192.168.1.xxx)? What if the "parent pc" also is running pacmon?

2. Does the pacmon software actually build it's OWN cache pulling from the pacman pkg cache or use the existing one? I'm wondering whether it's safe to "clear the cache" via yaourt-gui or should be avoided. [looks to me to use the same but figured better to double check]

3. Could the system also be setup to support .deb's for ubuntu systems? I have ancient laptops running bodhi linux that won't run well on much of anything else and ideally would like to have one cache solution rather than running squid-deb-proxy (which also uses avahi) on the ubuntu devices if possible. I may eventually see if arch + enlightenment or arch + lxde will work for me with a small enough footprint.

Most of my pc's have ssd's for boot drives...on a laptop that may be their only drive but I have one desktop with an external usb drive...I'd intended to redirect any cache to there...is there any way to issue a "consolidation" command so that all packages currently available end up in the cache of the site doing the consolidation request? This would then allow the laptop's for instance to clear the cache.

[rossmeier]

First of all, thanks for your questions.

1. pacmon uses UDP multicast packets to IP 224.0.0.1:9999. If you use bridged as networking configuration, pacmon should work flawlessly, however this might be a security risk. Also for Internal Networks in VirtualBox pacmon should work between guests.
2. No, it doesn't build it's own cache. It relies on the cache in /var/cache/pacman/pkg. However cleaning this cache with pacman -Sc only deletes old versions and therefore shouldn't be a problem. If you use pacman -Scc, this computer will not be able to mirror any packages to other computers
3. I simply don't know debian enought to decide this, sorry

If you want to keep your laptop's cache empty, you can simply update your PC first, then your Laptop and then clean your Laptop's cache. That should work just fine (even with pacman -Scc on the Laptop)

I hope, I could at least give you some answers. I might add them to the README sometime.