Mirroring Apt repositories

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The Apt (Advanced Package Tool) package management system is a set of tools to download, install, remove, upgrade, configure and manage Debian packages, and therefore all software installed on a Debian system. 
This package management tool is used by all Debian-based Linux distributions, mainly Debian and Ubuntu.

InterDiode now has the ability to copy an entire APT mirror from a sources.list configuration file. Since mirror sizes are typically limited to a few dozen GB, there’s no need to select specific packages to copy. During the copying process, the GPG signature of the mirror will be verified to ensure the integrity of the downloaded packages, unless instructed otherwise. Both formats, classic and modern DEB822, are accepted for copying, and instructions for configuring the machines will also be provided in both formats.

Additionally, it is also possible to create custom APT mirrors and add your own DEBIAN packages to them before transferring them to the internal network. This mirror will then be signed with a GPG key specific to InterDiode.

From a technical point of view, DEB packages are AR archives that contains a control TAR archive (with control files) and a data TAR archive (with actual package files). Handling DEB packages in InterDiode required to develop a library to read AR archive files and a generic parser for control text files.