Use apt-p2p To Improve Ubuntu 9.04 Upgrade

An anonymous reader writes "With Jaunty Jackalope scheduled for release in 12 days on April 23, this blog posting describes how to switch to apt-p2p in preparation for the upgrade. This should help significantly to reduce the load on the mirrors, smooth out the upgrade experience for all involved, and bypass the numerous problems that have occurred in the past on Ubuntu release day. Remember to disable all third-party repositories beforehand."

Comments

Website and Warning

[Daengbo]

The site doesn't have much information, but other sources I have read state that apt-p2p is very experimental. Use at your own peril!

Alternate CD

[elwin_windleaf]

You can also upgrade Ubuntu with an alternate install CD. These can be downloaded via bittorrent, and usually trigger an "automatic update" prompt as soon as they are inserted into an existing Ubuntu system.

Slashdotted?

[drinkypoo]

It worked for me. But in case it really is slashdotted here's the story, from memory (let's test those theories eh?)

1. apt-get install apt-p2p (Not in Hardy and older repos IIRC... for you late/sporadic upgraders)
2. Back up your /etc/apt/sources.list and then edit the file, s/\/\//\/\/localhost:9977\// (hope I got that right -- Guess I could have just used # or something eh?)
3. Not in the guide: edit /etc/apt-p2p/apt-p2p.conf and set UPLOAD_LIMIT ... just in case. :) You probably have to /etc/init.d/apt-p2p restart after that.
4. apt-get update
5. Then make the update... But it's not time for that yet.

Irony

[digitalderbs]

that a site advising the use of p2p to prevent the meltdown of servers has itself been slashdotted.

On a side note : web data and pages themselves could be p2p distributed too, no? Say a peer gets a webpage's hash (containing html and images) and the date/time of expiry for a webpage from a server. If other peers have that page (html+images), and it's up to date, you could download their copy. Otherwise, the server sends a fresh copy to you, and you seed it for others. Not being in computer science, I'm sure this has been proposed before and that there are glaring shortcomings I have missed.

Re:good idea but...

[vadim_t]

Ubuntu packages are signed. The signature certifies that the package was mirrored as-is and not modified in any way.

Re:good idea but...

[Kjella]

All packages are signed, the repository is just a convienient way of getting them. If you add a third party repository they usually also ask you to add their public key to the trusted package signers. That's also why you have all the local mirrors - I doubt Canonical operates very many of them. Same thing in companies, set one machine to download and the 100 others to download from the local machine, you don't need to put any trust in that machine as it's just passing signed packages. So you download the package from P2P or whatever, apt checks the signature and if's Genuine Canonical(tm) it'll install the package otherwise it'll complain. Didn't you notice the repositories are all http? No certificates or security checks there, anyone can give you any garbage data but it won't have the right signature.