Offline Repository Mirrors

Offline repository mirrors are pointing to APT repositories, for example from Proxmox VE, Proxmox Backup Server or Debian. After the initial setup, you can mirror all the available packages locally. They are organized by creating point-in-time snapshots of the repositories. Those snapshots can then be exported to a configured medium.

Setting Up a Mirror

First, either run the setup wizard (proxmox-offline-mirror setup), or the config mirror add command.

Tip

The quickest way to set up all relevant repositories for a Proxmox solution is to use the setup wizard. Choose the product when adding a mirror and confirm the question regarding auto-adding the Debian base repos.

For example, to manually add a mirror entry for the Debian Bullseye security repository, the following command can be used:

proxmox-offline-mirror config mirror add \
 --id debian-bullseye-security \
 --architectures amd64 \
 --architectures all \
 --repository 'deb http://deb.debian.org/debian-security bullseye-security main contrib non-free' \
 --key-path /etc/apt/trusted.gpg.d/debian-archive-bullseye-security-automatic.gpg \
 --sync true \
 --verify true \
 --base-dir /path/to/mirror/base-dir

Note

The base-dir directory can be shared by mirrors for repositories that have common contents to avoid storing files more than once. For example, having a single base directory for all mirrors referencing Proxmox repositories is recommended.

Note

The all architecture is meant for architecture independent packages, not for all possible architectures. It is usually always sensible to add it in addition to the host-specific architecture.

Syncing a Mirror

To create the first (and subsequent) snapshots, the following command can be used:

proxmox-offline-mirror mirror snapshot create debian-bullseye-security

Note

Depending on the parameters used and the size of the original repository, creating a snapshot can take both time and require significant disk space. This is especially true for the initial snapshot, as subsequent ones will re-use unchanged package files and indices.

Space Management

After removing a snapshot with proxmox-offline-mirror mirror snapshot remove, a proxmox-offline-mirror mirror gc invocation is needed to trigger the garbage collection to actually remove any contents from the underlying hard link pool that are no longer needed.