approx (5.7-3) unstable; urgency=medium Debconf is no longer used to set a custom port number for the approx server. To use something other than the default, port 9999, please modify the "ListenStream" line in the approx.socket file. -- Eric Cooper Sat, 17 Dec 2016 19:23:24 -0500 approx (5.7-1) unstable; urgency=medium The approx-gc program has been removed. Cleanup of the approx cache is now done using a simple find(1) command that removes files older than a specified number of days. -- Eric Cooper Wed, 16 Nov 2016 16:42:00 -0500 approx (5.0-1) unstable; urgency=low The $interval parameter is back, and approx once again caches Release files for up to $interval minutes. "File not found" responses are also cached now (in the form of empty files with zero permissions). The approx-update program is no longer necessary and has been removed. Application of pdiffs is now done in the background so clients do not have to wait for it. -- Eric Cooper Tue, 10 May 2011 16:11:00 -0400 approx (4.4-1) unstable; urgency=low The configuration file for approx can now be specified on the command line (i.e., the /etc/inetd.conf entry) using the "-c" or "--config" option. The pathname of the cache directory can now be specified in the configuration file using the $cache parameter. -- Eric Cooper Tue, 13 Jul 2010 17:49:35 -0400 approx (4.0-1) unstable; urgency=low The approx program no longer runs as an independent daemon; it is now run by inetd. Since the listening port and addresses can be specified in /etc/inetd.conf, the $port and $interface configuration parameters have been removed. Host access control using /etc/hosts.allow and /etc/hosts.deny is also supported by inetd. -- Eric Cooper Tue, 10 Mar 2009 13:37:00 -0400 approx (3.4-1) unstable; urgency=low A new program, approx-import, has been added. It can be used to populate the approx cache with existing .deb files, such as those found in /var/cache/apt/archives. For consistency, the other auxiliary programs have been renamed to approx-gc and approx-update. -- Eric Cooper Thu, 23 Oct 2008 21:16:00 -0400 approx (3.2.0) unstable; urgency=low If both IPv4 and IPv6 sockets are supported, approx will listen on both. -- Eric Cooper Wed, 16 Apr 2008 21:49:01 -0400 approx (3.1.0~rc1) experimental; urgency=low TCP wrappers support has been added. Access control rules can be specified for the approx daemon in /etc/hosts.allow and /etc/hosts.deny. Approx now listens on an IPv6 socket if supported by the kernel, otherwise it falls back to IPv4. The $interface parameter is not supported for IPv6, but TCP wrappers or iptables rules can be used instead. A new configuration parameter, $max_redirects, specifies the maximum number of HTTP redirections that will be followed when downloading a remote file. Requests for directories are now passed through without caching, so that tools like "wget -r" can be used to mirror a repository known to approx. Directory requests are detected by a path with a trailing / (or an HTTP redirection to one). -- Eric Cooper Thu, 13 Mar 2008 10:05:56 -0400 approx (3.0.0) unstable; urgency=low The approx server now handles pdiffs: incremental diffs to Packages files. When a client downloads a pdiff, the approx server uses it to update the cached Packages file if possible. When an up-to-date Packages file is present in the cache, the client's DiffIndex request is denied, forcing the client to fall back to the full Packages file. A new configuration parameter, $pdiffs, controls this behavior. Setting it to false causes approx to deny all DiffIndex requests, as it did previously. Since approx must decompress and recompress Packages files when applying pdiffs, and gzip is significantly faster than bzip2, approx denies requests for .bz2 versions and only delivers .gz versions. The $interval parameter has been eliminated. Now the approx server always contacts the remote repository when a Release or Release.gpg file is requested, and all other index files in the cache are validated against the Release file. A new configuration parameter, $offline, causes the approx server to deliver (possibly out-of-date) cached files when they cannot be downloaded from remote repositories. -- Eric Cooper Tue, 04 Dec 2007 12:24:16 -0500 approx (2.9.0) unstable; urgency=low Configuration parameters in /etc/approx/approx.conf should now begin with '$' to distinguish them from repository names. The old style is still accepted with a warning message. Several parameters have been added: $user, $group, $syslog, $verbose. See the approx.conf man page for details. The gc_approx program now removes empty subdirectories from the cache, simplifying the weekly cron job. -- Eric Cooper Wed, 13 Jun 2007 16:04:53 -0400 approx (2.06) unstable; urgency=low A new configuration variable, interface, forces approx to listen for connections on a specific network interface only. The approx server can now listen on privileged ports such as port 80. File: URIs are now supported in the approx.conf file. -- Eric Cooper Mon, 24 Apr 2006 16:09:22 -0400 approx (2.00) unstable; urgency=low Approx now uses curl subprocesses to download files from remote repositories. -- Eric Cooper Mon, 10 Oct 2005 10:04:09 -0400 approx (1.16) unstable; urgency=low The approx server now forks multiple processes to handle concurrent requests. A new configuration variable, max_wait, can be used to specify how many seconds an approx process will wait for a concurrent download of a file to complete, before attempting to download the file itself. -- Eric Cooper Fri, 13 May 2005 12:23:37 -0400 approx (1.14) unstable; urgency=low The --foreground option allows approx to be run more easily from the command line, a debugger, or the runit init scheme. -- Eric Cooper Thu, 5 May 2005 10:43:36 -0400 approx (1.13) unstable; urgency=low The approx daemon always uses /var/cache/approx now; the cache directory can no longer be changed in the approx.conf file. But /var/cache/approx can be a symbolic link, so the cache directory can still be located elsewhere. -- Eric Cooper Wed, 27 Apr 2005 18:39:13 -0400