Problem: every time you use initchroot.sh the hundreds of megabytes of packages are downloaded again. Solution: set up the approx package to cache these packages. 1. install the approx package, % sudo aptitude install approx 2. add the following lines to /etc/approx/approx.conf, debian http://http.us.debian.org/debian security http://security.debian.org/ 3. restart approx, % sudo /etc/init.d/approx restart 4. follow README, but during the creation of the root filesystem, add the --local-apt-mirror option, like this: sudo ./initchroot.sh \ --package-list kde.packages \ --local-apt-mirror \ "deb http://localhost:9999/debian lenny main contrib non-free deb http://localhost:9999/security lenny/updates main contrib non-free" \ kde.root