Speeding up Apt

Remember: apptitude does not have super cow powers.

This is a small post about speeding up Aptitude. First you need to download and install apt-spy. It is a utility that tests the bandwidths of the various Debian mirrors an appropriately selects the fastest mirror. Surprisingly, they may not be the closest mirror.

sudo apt-spy install
sudo apt-spy update
sudo apt-spy -d wheezy -s ca 

The flag -d sets your current version such as wheezy, squeeze, etc and -s sets your country (ca=Canada). If you wish to select an entire are you may also go with the -a flag such as -a North America.

You should go into /etc/apt/sources.list and comment out your current mirrors as it will be given priority of apt-spy configuration. If you wish to see apt-spy's selected mirror go to /etc/apt/sources.list.d/apt-spy.list


# sources.list generated by apt-spy v3.1
#
# Generated using:
#
# apt-spy \
# -d wheezy \
# -s ca
#
deb http://debian.yorku.ca/debian/ wheezy main #contrib non-free
deb-src http://debian.yorku.ca/debian/ wheezy main #contrib non-free
#deb http://security.debian.org/ stable/updates main