flocon - Archlinux packages shared on local network

Introduction

This project aims to provide a easy way to share pacman cache between multiple machines on the same local network.

There already is a project that does this: pacserve. I tried to use it, failed and decided to rewrite it with twisted.

Installation

AUR Packaging

The easiest way to install flocon is to install flocon-git from AUR with your favorite AUR package manager. Do the configuration steps below. Then you can activate the systemd daemon named flocon-git.

Manual installation

Getting and using from sources

1. Install python2 and python2-pip from official repositories.
2. Clone this repository: git clone https://bitbucket.org/kushou/flocon.git
3. Run pip2 install -r requirements.txt
4. Do the Configuration step below.
5. Then you can run python2 flocon.py (You can add --debug as an option)

Installing from sources

You can use the following script to install flocon from a clone of the git repository manually.

#! /bin/sh

set -e on

cd `mktemp -d`
git clone https://bitbucket.org/kushou/flocon.git
cd flocon/
makepkg -s --noconfirm
sudo pacman --noconfirm -U flocon-git-*-1-any.pkg.tar.xz

Configuration

Modify your /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist with (needs root priviledge):

1. Add Server = http://localhost:19433/$repo/os/$arch as your first server.
2. Optionally, if you don't want to see 404 from flocon, add the following comment in front of a copy of your current first mirror: # flocon: Serv..., so that flocon will use it as a fallback.

Do that on all your hosts and you are done. You can then use pacman like any other time. It will use the cache of one the machines on your LAN if it finds it, else it will fallback on the default server. Keep other servers uncommented, in case you don't have flocon started. If it is the case, you will just see pacman complaining that sevrer localhost is not responding and it will try with the next one not commented.

Btw, you need port 19432 open on both udp and tcp protocols, and tcp port 19433 open on loopback interface.

Flocon doesn't need special rights. It can be run in a special account, with no specific configuration (read: you don't need to run it as root/your user)

Features

• Every node of the "local shared cache network" is found automatically using multicast (thanks pacserve for the idea)
• It lists current connected clients on SIGUSR1 (kill -USR1 `pgrep flocon` )
• If it didn't succeed connection (join multicast group, 15 minutes try every 5 seconds), you need to send it SIGUSR2 to retry (when you finally are connected).

Todo:

• Could be nice to ban clients. (if sending corrupted packages)
• Do we need authentication and "trust check"? (using public/private key system)
  • AFAIK, packets are now signed, so it will fail on this check if packet is corrupted, it may be a pain though if you can't update a package through flocon... Maybe check all packages before sending them?
• Moreover, security?