4.2. Configuring Proxy Precaching

Your Proxy server can precache or mirror RPM files. This means that RPM files are delivered directly from the Proxy server to the clients; the clients do not have to wait for the files to download from the Satellite server to the Proxy server, and then be delivered to the client. The Proxy server recognizes RPM requests from yum as well as anaconda (for kickstart installations and provisioning). See the rhn_package_manager manual page for more information.
Proxy precaching is especially useful if the network connection to the Satellite server is slow or if bandwidth is at a premium. You can use the rhn_package_manager command to manually load RPM files into the Proxy server's cache, or you can create a cron job that uses the rsync command to perform the task automatically.

Note

Using the Proxy server precache feature requires that disk space be available at all times for the required RPM files. Unlike a non-precached Proxy server, where only requested RPM files exist, and only until they expire, precached RPM files remain indefinitely on the Proxy server whether they are used or not.

4.2.1. Manually Loading RPM Files into the Proxy Cache

Satellite Proxy and rhn_package_manager have been updated to avoid unwanted cache collisions. You can use the existing rhn_package_manager --copyonly command to populate the cache; (an alias to that option has been added with the more user-friendly name --cache-locally). Another significant change to rhn_package_manager is that it can now read and import packages from a channel export, which could for example be created on the Satellite server using the rhn-satellite-exporter utility. This is in addition to the other methods that rhn_package_manager can use to import RPM files, such as the --dir option for importing all RPM files in a directory, or a list of RPM files supplied on the command line.
The following example demonstrates how to cache only the RPM files that exist in the my-channel-l channel, using a channel export from the Satellite server. This export contains all the channels from the Satellite server, and is mounted on /mnt/export: 
# rhn_package_manager --cache-locally --from-export /mnt/export --channel my-channel-1
To import all the RPM files from all channels that the export contains, omit the --channel option: 
# rhn_package_manager --cache-locally --from-export /mnt/export
If the channel export is spread across multiple ISO images it is not necessary to combine them locally on the Proxy before running the rhn_package_manager command. Mount the images one at a time and run the same command on each.