# Frostmirror - (lightweight airgap alternative inspired from panamax and romt) - an offline cargo repository for airgap system that can be deployed through a docker image

**URL:** <https://users.rust-lang.org/t/frostmirror-lightweight-airgap-alternative-inspired-from-panamax-and-romt-an-offline-cargo-repository-for-airgap-system-that-can-be-deployed-through-a-docker-image/139649>\
**Category:** announcements\
**Created:** [April 19, 2026, 12:24pm UTC](https://users.rust-lang.org/t/frostmirror-lightweight-airgap-alternative-inspired-from-panamax-and-romt-an-offline-cargo-repository-for-airgap-system-that-can-be-deployed-through-a-docker-image/139649 "2026-04-19T12:24:42Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![pillisan42](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/flex019/user_avatar/users.rust-lang.org/pillisan42/32/52279_2.png) [@pillisan42](https://users.rust-lang.org/u/pillisan42)\
**Post date:** [April 19, 2026, 12:24pm UTC](https://users.rust-lang.org/t/frostmirror-lightweight-airgap-alternative-inspired-from-panamax-and-romt-an-offline-cargo-repository-for-airgap-system-that-can-be-deployed-through-a-docker-image/139649/1 "2026-04-19T12:24:42Z")

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Hi,

Two weeks ago I was working on a application that must be compiled on an air gapped environment.

After spending two days trying to download the 400go of [crates.io](http://crates.io) and setting up panamax, I've got tired of trying.

So with the help of Claude Code I made a tiny app over a night that can be docker deployed even on an air gapped system with help of "docker save" and "docker load" to ease setup on offline environment.

This tools has helped me to reduce to the only necessary size I needed

> **[GitHub - pillisan42/frostmirror: A lightweight, dependency-scoped Rust mirror...](https://github.com/pillisan42/frostmirror/tree/master)**
>
> master

Here is a quick start on how to use the tool from my git repository :

## Quick Start

### Step 1 -- Define your dependencies

Create a `depends.toml` file listing the crates your project needs:

```toml
[dependencies]
tokio = { version = "1", features = ["rt-multi-thread", "net", "macros"] }
serde = { version = "1", features = ["derive"] }
axum = "0.7"

[platforms]
targets = ["x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu"]
toolchain = "stable"

```

You only need to list direct dependencies. frostmirror delegates to `cargo generate-lockfile` to resolve the entire transitive dependency tree -- features, optional deps, and platform-specific deps are all handled by cargo's own resolver.

### Step 2 -- Fetch (online machine)

```bash
frostmirror fetch --config depends.toml --output ./releases/

```

This produces a file like `20260402-2130-crates.pkg` in `./releases/`. The bundle contains every `.crate` file, sparse index entries, rustup binaries, and a cargo config.

### Step 3 -- Transfer across the air gap

```bash
cp ./releases/20260402-2130-crates.pkg /media/usb/

```

### Step 4 -- Import (offline machine)

Drop the `.pkg` file into the incoming directory:

```bash
cp /media/usb/20260402-2130-crates.pkg ./incoming/

```

If the registry container is running with `--watch-incoming`, the import happens automatically. Otherwise, import manually:

```bash
frostmirror import 20260402-2130-crates.pkg --mirror /mirror

```

### Step 5 -- Build your project offline

```toml
# ~/.cargo/config.toml
[http]
check-revoke = false # may be needed if you have a self sign ssl https server

[source.frostmirror]
registry = "sparse+http://frostmirror.internal:8080/index/"

[source.crates-io]
replace-with = "frostmirror"

```

```bash
cargo build # resolves everything from frostmirror

```

Hope this will help someone as it helped me.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![pillisan42](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/flex019/user_avatar/users.rust-lang.org/pillisan42/32/52279_2.png) [@pillisan42](https://users.rust-lang.org/u/pillisan42)\
**Post date:** [April 28, 2026, 10:43pm UTC](https://users.rust-lang.org/t/frostmirror-lightweight-airgap-alternative-inspired-from-panamax-and-romt-an-offline-cargo-repository-for-airgap-system-that-can-be-deployed-through-a-docker-image/139649/2 "2026-04-28T22:43:35Z")

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Hi, I just released a new version of frost mirror

Here is the new client setup page with airgap rustup-init that works (tested on windows only)  
[![](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/pillisan42/frostmirror/refs/heads/master/resources/easy_config.png) ](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/pillisan42/frostmirror/refs/heads/master/resources/easy_config.png)

# **Improvements**

- [FEATURE] Improved installation page from webapp, supports windows,macos,linux

- [FEATURE] now we can add multiple version of the same dependencies in a depend.toml like this

- [BUGFIX] now rustup-init and tar.xz are downloaded in packages

- [FEATURE] Add a button to export package from webui

```rust
- [dependencies]
tokio = { version = "1", features = ["rt-multi-thread", "net", "macros"] }
serde = { version = "1", features = ["derive"] }
axum = "0.7"

[dependencies.2]
tower = "0.4"
axum = "0.6"

```

- [BUGFIX] when a crates has os specific dependencies all dependencies were not downloaded  
Project has been release on [crates.io](http://crates.io) [https://crates.io/search?q=frostmirror](https://crates.io/search?q=frostmirror)

- [FEATURE] now frostmirror has a "live mirror" feature that enable a team to have a local server connected to internet that they can use

# **Quick docker configuration**

- download [https://raw.githubusercontent.com/pillisan42/frostmirror/refs/heads/master/scripts/import.sh](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/pillisan42/frostmirror/refs/heads/master/scripts/import.sh)

- the docker image frostmirror-docker-image-1.0.0.tar.gz (below)

- [https://raw.githubusercontent.com/pillisan42/frostmirror/refs/heads/master/compose.airgap.yml](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/pillisan42/frostmirror/refs/heads/master/compose.airgap.yml)

```rust
./import.sh frostmirror-docker-image-1.0.0.tar.gz
docker compose -f compose.airgap.yml up -d

```

you can check it out here :

> **[Release v1.0.0 · pillisan42/frostmirror](https://github.com/pillisan42/frostmirror/releases/tag/v1.0.0)**
>
> Improvements
> 
> \[FEATURE\] Improved installation page from webapp, supports windows,macos,linux
> \[FEATURE\] now we can add multiple version of the same dependencies in a depend.toml like this
> \[BUGFIX\] n...

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![system](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/flex019/user_avatar/users.rust-lang.org/system/32/51372_2.png) [@system](https://users.rust-lang.org/u/system)\
**Post date:** [July 27, 2026, 10:43pm UTC](https://users.rust-lang.org/t/frostmirror-lightweight-airgap-alternative-inspired-from-panamax-and-romt-an-offline-cargo-repository-for-airgap-system-that-can-be-deployed-through-a-docker-image/139649/3 "2026-07-27T22:43:48Z")

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