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Howto Setup a Private Package Repository with reprepro and nginx

As the number of servers I am responsible for grows, I have been trying to eliminate all non packaged software in production. Although ubuntu and Debian have massive software repositories, there are some things which just aren’t available yet or are internal meta packages. Once the packages are built they need to be deployed to servers. The simplest way to do this is to run a private apt repository. There are a few options for building an apt repository, but the most popular and simplest seems to be reprepro. I used Sander Marechal and Lionel Porcheron’s reprepro howtos as a basis for getting my repository up and running.

nginx is a lightweight HTTP server (and reverse proxy). It performs very well serving static files, which is perfect for a package repository. I also wanted to minimise the memory footprint of the server, which made nginx appealing.

To install the packages we need, run sudo apt-get install reprepro nginx

Then it is time to configure reprepro. First we create our directory structure:

$ sudo mkdir -p /srv/reprepro/ubuntu/{conf,dists,incoming,indices,logs,pool,project,tmp}
$ cd /srv/reprepro/ubuntu/
$ sudo chown -R `whoami` . # changes the repository owner to the current user

Now we need to create some configuration files.

/srv/reprepro/ubuntu/conf/distributions

Origin: Your Name
Label: Your repository name
Codename: karmic
Architectures: i386 amd64 source
Components: main
Description: Description of repository you are creating
SignWith: YOUR-KEY-ID

/srv/reprepro/ubuntu/conf/options

ask-passphrase
basedir .

If you have a package ready to load, add it using the following command:

$ reprepro includedeb karmic /path/to/my-package_0.1-1.deb
# change /path/to/my-package_0.1-1.deb to the path to your package

Once reprepro is setup and you have some packages loaded, you need to make it so you can serve the files over http. I run an internal dns zone called “internal” and so the package server will be configured to respond to packages.internal. You may need to change the server_name value to match your own environment. Create a file called /etc/nginx/sites-available/vhost-packages.conf with the following content:

server {
  listen 80;
  server_name packages.internal;

  access_log /var/log/nginx/packages-access.log;
  error_log /var/log/nginx/packages-error.log;

  location / {
    root /srv/reprepro;
    index index.html;
  }

  location ~ /(.*)/conf {
    deny all;
  }

  location ~ /(.*)/db {
    deny all;
  }
}

Next we need to increase the server_names_hash_bucket_size. Create a file called /etc/nginx/conf.d/server_names_hash_bucket_size.conf

server_names_hash_bucket_size 64;

Note: Many sites advocate sticking this value in the http section of the /etc/nginx/nginx.conf config file, but in Debian and Ubuntu /etc/nginx/conf.d/*.conf is included in the http section. I think my method is cleaner for upgrading and clearly delineates the stock and custom configuration.

To enable and activate the new virtual host run the following commands:

$ cd /etc/nginx/sites-enabled
$ sudo ln -s ../sites-available/packages.internal.conf .
$ sudo service nginx reload

You should get some output that looks like this

Reloading nginx configuration: the configuration file /etc/nginx/nginx.conf syntax is ok
configuration file /etc/nginx/nginx.conf test is successful
nginx.

Now you can add the new repository to your machines. I recommend creating a file called /etc/apt/sources.list.d/packages.internal.list and put the following line in the file:

deb http://packages.internal/ubuntu/ karmic main

To make the machine aware of the new repository and associated packages, run sudo apt-get update.

That’s it. Now you have a lightweight package repository with a lightweight web server. Perfect for running in a virtual machine. Depending on your setup you could probably get away with using 256Mb of RAM and a few gig of disk.

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