How to Set Up an Offline Local PyPI Mirror on a Raspberry Pi

First, install Raspberry Pi OS on a Raspberry Pi 4 with a 200 GB SD card, then install the required packages:

$ sudo apt install dnsmasq hostapd nginx $ pip install minirepo pypiserver

Configure a static IP for the Wi‑Fi interface by editing /etc/dhcpcd.conf and set up dnsmasq as the DHCP server, defining the address range 192.168.4.2‑192.168.4.30 with a 24‑hour lease.

Create a hostapd configuration file ( /etc/hostapd/hostapd.conf ) with your SSID and passphrase, then point the system to this file by setting DAEMON_CONF="/etc/hostapd/hostapd.conf" in /etc/default/hostapd .

Enable IP forwarding and NAT by editing /etc/sysctl.conf (set net.ipv4.ip_forward=1 ) and adding an iptables rule:

sudo iptables -t nat -A POSTROUTING -o eth0 -j MASQUERADE

Save the iptables rules with sudo sh -c "iptables-save > /etc/iptables.ipv4.nat" and ensure they are restored on boot via /etc/rc.local .

Use minirepo to clone the desired PyPI packages (e.g., Python 3 source, sdist, bdist_wheel, bdist_egg) and store them in ~/minirepo . Install minirepo with pip install minirepo and configure its JSON file as needed.

Start the local PyPI server with pypi-server -p 8080 ~/minirepo & , which serves the cloned packages to clients.

Set up nginx as a reverse proxy and cache by creating a virtual host configuration (e.g., /etc/nginx/sites-available/cheeseshop.com ) that forwards port 80 requests to the pypiserver on port 8080 and defines a 10 GB cache.

Enable the site with a symbolic link in /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/ , then restart nginx and dnsmasq services.

Configure DNS resolution for the custom domain by adding an entry to /etc/hosts mapping cheeseshop.com to the Pi’s static IP, and restart dnsmasq .

Create a Systemd service to start pypiserver on boot: write a start script (e.g., /usr/bin/start-pypi-server.sh ), make it executable, then create /etc/systemd/system/pypiserver.service with ExecStart=/usr/bin/start-pypi-server.sh . Enable and start the service with sudo systemctl enable pypiserver and sudo systemctl start pypiserver .

Clients can now install packages from the offline mirror using pip with the --index-url and --trusted-host options, for example:

pip install --trusted-host cheeseshop.com --index-url http://cheeseshop.com/simple/ django

The article concludes that the Raspberry Pi now functions as an offline PyPI repository, providing a low‑cost solution for environments without Internet access.