[vox] apt-get via torrent?

[Sameer Verma <sverma@sfsMAPSu.edu>]

Hi all,
This semester, I taught my "Managing Open Source" class in a lab where
we had a dozen Linux boxes (dual booted Windows XP/Ubuntu Hoary
Hedgehog) for my students to work on.  Each student installed the distro
herself (himself) and learned a good bit about partitions, distros, etc.
They also occasionally used Synaptic to upgrade the distro and keep it
updated.

Now that the semester is coming to an end, I've started thinking about
ways in which it would be easier to upgrade the whole lab and still keep
distros fully installed (as opposed to some terminal server magic) so
that students can do things with it (i.e. log in as root or sudo over to
see how things work). Instead of having 12 machines apt-get via Synaptic
every few days, why not get one machine updated and then use torrent to
do the same for the rest?

So that got me thinking...Is it possible to run Synaptic (or apt-get)
via torrent instead of via http or ftp?

BTW, the class did install OpenOffice.org 2.0.0 on Windows XP using
bittorrent. They first got OOo 2.0.0 on one machine and then ran
torrents to get it distributed to other machines in the lab. It was a
fun exercise to see the torrent pieces coming from across the desk!

Sameer

-- 
Dr. Sameer Verma, Ph.D.
Asst. Professor of Information Systems
San Francisco State University
San Francisco CA 94132 USA
http://verma.sfsu.edu/
http://opensource.sfsu.edu/
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