> Maybe. AFAIK, the package manager has no way to check if there's > enough space in /var/cache/apt/archives. Best way is, to ensure that > /var has enough space for downloading all packages.
You can move the apt cache to a NFS-mounted disk with enough space. A gigabit ethernet connection is highly recommended. I have the following (slightly sanitized for this posting) in a prepareapt hook for certain classes of hosts: [ ! -d $FAI_ROOT/wrk ] && mkdir $FAI_ROOT/wrk mount -t nfs -o rw,tcp,noatime,vers=3,hard,intr,nolock,sec=sys disk-server:/wrk/install-cache $FAI_ROOT/wrk/apt-cache rm -rf $FAI_ROOT/wrk/apt-cache/* cd $FAI_ROOT/var/cache cp -a apt/* $FAI_ROOT/wrk/apt-cache mv apt apt-orig ln -s /wrk/apt-cache ./apt Probably some of the mount options are unnecessary: this is a combination that just happened to work and was sufficiently efficient as well. On the disk-server, /wrk/install-cache is exported with write rights to nobody:nogroup. Can be a security risk in certain scenarios. Also, only one installation may be in progress at any given time: the install cache is shared between the hosts. You may improve the approach by providing host-specific cache directories on the disk server, playing with permissions, etc. -- Toomas Tamm e-mail: tt-fai (at) kky.ttu.ee Chair of Inorganic Chemistry voice: INT+372-620-2810 Tallinn University of Technology fax: INT+372-620-2828 Ehitajate tee 5, EE-19086 Tallinn, Estonia http://www.kk.ttu.ee/toomas/
