APT Package Management – How to Generate the Release File on a Local Package Repository

aptdebdpkgpackaging

Context

With local package repository, I refer to a set of software and configurations on a server which allows to store a software and any client to install this software by normal apt-get command (supposing the repository added to sources.list)

For the creation of a local package repository, I followed this tutorial, which consist in:

  1. generate the .deb
  2. Store the .deb over apache2 server
  3. Generate a Package.gz file

1- To generate the .deb, the software files are required, a DEBIAN folder with metadata is generated and the following command make the job:

dpkg-deb --build <software folder with DEBIAN>

2- I skip this part as very unrelated

3- With the current directory being the apache folder with the .deb, call:

dpkg-scanpackages debian /dev/null | gzip -9c > debian/Packages.gz

The problem

Calling apt-get update over the client machine, it complains with:

W: The repository 'http://example.com packages/ Release' does not have a Release file.

This file is effectively missing on my local store, and look like a register of checksums. But after searching on Internet, and given my low understanding of the topic, I was not able to find how to generate it.

Note: my sources.list has the following line:

deb http://example.com packages/

The question

How to generate the Release file for a local package repository?

Best Answer

There are a number of ways of going about this; I use apt-ftparchive.

  1. Create an aptftp.conf file in the root of your repository:

    APT::FTPArchive::Release {
  Origin "Your origin";
  Label "Your label";
  Suite "unstable";
  Codename "sid";
  Architectures "amd64 i386 source";
  Components "main";
  Description "Your description";
};

    with the appropriate values (change “Origin”, “Label”, “Description” at least, and adjust “Architectures” to match the binaries you host).

  2. Create a matching aptgenerate.conf file alongside:

    Dir::ArchiveDir ".";
Dir::CacheDir ".";
TreeDefault::Directory "pool/";
TreeDefault::SrcDirectory "pool/";
Default::Packages::Extensions ".deb";
Default::Packages::Compress ". gzip bzip2";
Default::Sources::Compress ". gzip bzip2";
Default::Contents::Compress "gzip bzip2";

BinDirectory "dists/unstable/main/binary-amd64" {
  Packages "dists/unstable/main/binary-amd64/Packages";
  Contents "dists/unstable/Contents-amd64";
  SrcPackages "dists/unstable/main/source/Sources";
};

BinDirectory "dists/unstable/main/binary-i386" {
  Packages "dists/unstable/main/binary-i386/Packages";
  Contents "dists/unstable/Contents-i386";
  SrcPackages "dists/unstable/main/source/Sources";
};

Tree "dists/unstable" {
  Sections "main"; # contrib non-free";
  Architectures "amd64 i386 source";
};

    (removing i386 if you don’t need that).

  3. In your repository, clear the database:

    rm -f packages-i386.db packages-amd64.db

  4. Generate the package catalogs:

    apt-ftparchive generate -c=aptftp.conf aptgenerate.conf

  5. Generate the Release file:

    apt-ftparchive release -c=aptftp.conf dists/unstable >dists/unstable/Release

  6. Sign it:

    gpg -u yourkeyid -bao dists/unstable/Release.gpg dists/unstable/Release
gpg -u yourkeyid --clear-sign --output dists/unstable/InRelease dists/unstable/Release

    (with the appropriate id instead of yourkeyid).

Whenever you make a change to the repository, you need to run steps 3 to 6 again.

Related Question