apt-cacher refuses to pass kickstart configuration files

[Lars Noodén]

If an installation CD sets the HTTP_PROXY environment variable, then all HTTP requests, including those for a kickstart file go through the proxy. In the case of Ubuntu and other Debian-based distros, the fastest proxy for APT packages is apt-cacher.

For example,

LABEL net
  menu label ^Install Kubuntu via network
  kernel /install/vmlinuz
  append ks=http://192.168.101.101/ks.cfg file=/cdrom/preseed/kubuntu.seed initrd=/install/initrd.gz quiet -- http_proxy=http://192.168.101.101:3142/

However, when the installer tries to get the kickstart file (ks.cfg) an error occurs:

     "Proxy request sent, awaiting response... 403 Sorry, not allowed to fetch that type of file: ks.cfg
      12:46:52 ERROR 403: Sorry, not allowed to fetch that type of file: ks.cfg."

A work-around is to serve the ks.cfg via FTP, but that's an annoyance to set up a second service.

[Jim Bailey (jim-freesolutions)]

Have you tried adding it as a regexp in /etc/apt-cacher/apt-cacher.conf there is a section (repated below) that should make it trivial.

# Permitted package files - this is a perl regular expression which matches all
# package-type files (files that are uniquely identified by their filename).
# The default is:
#package_files_regexp = (?:\.deb|\.rpm|\.dsc|\.tar\.gz|\.diff\.gz|\.udeb|index\.db-.+\.gz|\.jigdo|\.template)$