What you need

  1. a server running ubuntu
  2. enough disk space (at least 600G)
  3. good internet connection
  4. a domain name (optional)
  5. a ssl certificate (optional)

Prepare your server

You can buy a cloud server, or use a local machine. Here, I am using a local machine to setup a offline apt mirror which can speed up my workflow.

Install apt-mirror

Just run the following command to install apt-mirror on your server:

sudo apt install apt-mirror

Patch apt-mirror (optional)

Use this repo to patch your apt-mirror. All you need to do is download this repository and replace your /usr/bin/apt-mirror with this repo’s binary.

You have many ways to do this. You can clone it directly on your server if your server have git. Here, I download the binary and use scp to upload it to my server.

# run this on your local machine
scp ./apt-mirror username@your-host:~

# run this on your server
sudo mv /usr/bin/apt-mirror /usr/bin/apt-mirror.origin # backup old file
sudo mv ./apt-mirror /usr/bin/

This process is optional. If your sync process works fine, ignore this.

Choose your mirror source

The official source is http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/. You can use it of course, but it may very slow depend on your server’s region.

My server is on Beijing, the nearest and fastest mirror is http://mirrors.huaweicloud.com/ubuntu/. You can do some speed test and choose the best source for you.

Here are some mirror source in China:

Prepare your disk

Choose a palace to store all the file. You can use the default path which is /var/spool/apt-mirror.

If you use a different path, copy /var/spool/apt-mirror to your new path:

For example, I want to save all the files under my hhd which is mounted on /mnt/data:

cp /var/spool/apt-mirror /mnt/data/apt-mirror -r

Edit your mirror.list

Before start mirroring, edit /etc/apt/mirror.list to specify the file store path and source.

Here is a simple example if you need to mirror both noble and jammy:

set base_path    /mnt/data/apt-mirror
set nthreads     20
set _tilde 0

# For Ubuntu 24.04
deb http://mirrors.huaweicloud.com/ubuntu/ noble main restricted universe multiverse
deb http://mirrors.huaweicloud.com/ubuntu/ noble-updates main restricted universe multiverse
deb http://mirrors.huaweicloud.com/ubuntu/ noble-backports main restricted universe multiverse
deb http://mirrors.huaweicloud.com/ubuntu/ noble-security main restricted universe multiverse

# For Ubuntu 22.04
deb http://mirrors.huaweicloud.com/ubuntu/ jammy main restricted universe multiverse
deb http://mirrors.huaweicloud.com/ubuntu/ jammy-updates main restricted universe multiverse
deb http://mirrors.huaweicloud.com/ubuntu/ jammy-backports main restricted universe multiverse
deb http://mirrors.huaweicloud.com/ubuntu/ jammy-security main restricted universe multiverse

clean http://mirrors.huaweicloud.com/ubuntu/

noble is the code name for Ubuntu 24.04. If you need other versions, you can refer to

  • noble (24.04)
  • jammy (22.04)
  • focal (20.04)
  • bionic (18.04)
  • xenial (16.04)

If you need to mirror both amd64 and i386, change your config file like this:

deb-amd64 http://mirrors.huaweicloud.com/ubuntu/ noble main restricted universe multiverse
deb-amd64 http://mirrors.huaweicloud.com/ubuntu/ noble-updates main restricted universe multiverse
deb-amd64 http://mirrors.huaweicloud.com/ubuntu/ noble-backports main restricted universe multiverse
deb-amd64 http://mirrors.huaweicloud.com/ubuntu/ noble-security main restricted universe multiverse

deb-i386 http://mirrors.huaweicloud.com/ubuntu/ noble main restricted universe multiverse
deb-i386 http://mirrors.huaweicloud.com/ubuntu/ noble-updates main restricted universe multiverse
deb-i386 http://mirrors.huaweicloud.com/ubuntu/ noble-backports main restricted universe multiverse
deb-i386 http://mirrors.huaweicloud.com/ubuntu/ noble-security main restricted universe multiverse

Start mirroring

Just run the following command to start mirroring:

sudo apt-mirror

This need a long time to download all files from mirror source depend on your network bandwidth. It may cost up to 6 hours. So I highly recommend you run this under tmux.

Configure your web server

After apt-mirror did its jobs perfectly, you can checkout the file apt-mirror just downloaded. Then, you need to setup a static web server.

There are a lot way to serve a static web server. You can choose your favorite one like caddy or nginx. Here I use nginx as an example:

server {
    listen 80;
    server_name mirrors.aimersoft.org;

    location / {
        return 301 /ubuntu;
    }

    location /ubuntu {
        alias /mnt/data/apt-mirror/mirror/mirrors.huaweicloud.com/ubuntu;
        autoindex on;
    }
}

Change the server_name to your domain and change the alias to your path.

If you didn’t setup a domain, it’s also ok to use bare ip address.

The alias path need to be the father directory of dists and pool.

- ubuntu/ <-- use this path
    - dists/
        - jammy/
        - jammy-backports/
        - jammy-security
        - jammy-updates/
        - noble/
        - noble-backports/
        - noble-security
        - noble-updates/
    - pool/
        - main/
        - multiverse/
        - restricted/
        - universe/

You can serve website with nginx’s autoindex. Also, you can use some other static-web-server to make the website looks better.

You can start static-web-server like this:

static-web-server \
    --host 127.0.0.1 \
    --port 8080 \
    --root /mnt/data/apt-mirror/mirror/mirrors.huaweicloud.com/ubuntu \
    --directory-listing true

or ghfs like this:

ghfs --listen 8080 --root /mnt/data/apt-mirror/mirror/mirrors.huaweicloud.com/ubuntu

or Aiursoft.Static like this:

static --path /mnt/data/apt-mirror/mirror/mirrors.huaweicloud.com/ubuntu -p 8080 --allow-directory-browsing

Run these binary under tmux or write a service file like this:

sudo vim /etc/systemd/system/mirror-web.service

[Unit]
Description=Apt Mirror Web Server
After=network.target
Wants=network.target

[Service]
User=www-data
Type=simple
Restart=on-failure
RestartSec=5s
ExecStart=/usr/local/bin/ghfs --listen 8080 --root /mnt/data/apt-mirror/mirror/mirrors.huaweicloud.com/ubuntu
WorkingDirectory=/mnt/data/apt-mirror/mirror/mirrors.huaweicloud.com/ubuntu
LimitNOFILE=1048576

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

Then start service like this:

sudo systemctl start mirror-web

Make it runs automatically after system boot:

sudo systemctl enable mirror-web

Finally configure reverse proxy for nginx:

server {
    listen 80;
    server_name mirrors.aimersoft.org;
    
    location /ubuntu {
        proxy_pass http://localhost:8080;

        proxy_set_header Host $host;
        proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr;
        proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Proto $scheme;
        proxy_set_header Upgrade $http_upgrade;
    }
}

Setup https (optional)

If you want to setup https too, here is an example:

server {
    listen 443 ssl http2;
    server_name mirrors.aimersoft.org;

    ssl_certificate /etc/nginx/ssl/fullchain.pem;
    ssl_certificate_key /etc/nginx/ssl/privkey.pem;

    ssl_protocols TLSv1.2 TLSv1.3;
    ssl_prefer_server_ciphers on;
    ssl_ciphers 'EECDH+AESGCM:EDH+AESGCM';

    add_header Strict-Transport-Security "max-age=31536000; includeSubDomains; preload" always;
    add_header X-Frame-Options DENY;
    add_header X-Content-Type-Options nosniff;
    add_header X-XSS-Protection "1; mode=block";
    add_header Referrer-Policy "no-referrer-when-downgrade";

    location / {
        return 301 /ubuntu;
    }

    location /ubuntu {
        alias /mnt/data/apt-mirror/mirror/mirrors.huaweicloud.com/ubuntu;
        autoindex on;
    }
}

Setup crontab job

Add this line to /etc/crontab to auto mirroring every day with crontab:

0  3  * * *     root    /usr/bin/apt-mirror

Configure your client

For Ubuntu 24.04:

Edit this file /etc/apt/sources.list.d/ubuntu.sources, replace URIs with your sever:

Types: deb
# URIs: http://mirrors.huaweicloud.com/ubuntu/
URIs: http://mirrors.aimersoft.org/ubuntu/
Suites: noble noble-updates noble-backports
Components: main restricted universe multiverse
Signed-By: /usr/share/keyrings/ubuntu-archive-keyring.gpg

Types: deb
URIs: http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/
Suites: noble-security
Components: main restricted universe multiverse
Signed-By: /usr/share/keyrings/ubuntu-archive-keyring.gpg

For Ubuntu before 24.04:

You need to edit /etc/apt/sources.list. Here is an example for ubuntu 22.04:

deb http://mirrors.aimersoft.org/ubuntu/ jammy main restricted universe multiverse
deb http://mirrors.aimersoft.org/ubuntu/ jammy-updates main restricted universe multiverse
deb http://mirrors.aimersoft.org/ubuntu/ jammy-backports main restricted universe multiverse
deb http://mirrors.aimersoft.org/ubuntu/ jammy-security main restricted universe multiverse