[SLE] On-demand caching local mirror?

I'm wondering if anyone can come up with an answer. I'm after a piece of
software that will "mirror" an ftp directory (as an example) locally, but
will not retrieve the files unless read. I'm sort of thinking of a FUSE sort
of local filesystem.

i.e. The SUSE updates repository.
1. Set up a local folder.
2. Get the remote file list.
3. An app requests a file.
4. If in local cache, return file, goto 3
5. If not local, and if connection closed, reopen.
6. Try to retrieve, then return file, goto 3
(every so often (on mount, once/day) repeat 2)

The point being that I have multiple machines I want to update, so I don't
want to waste bandwidth by a) downloading the kde updates repeatedly, or b)
replicating the whole folder with updates for packages I haven't installed.

It seems like this would be a sensible addition to SUSE for those of us with
multiple machines, (applying to virtual ones too.) I've googled, and gone
through lots of pages, but I can't find something that operates like this.
The closest I seen so far is fuseftp. The two problems I can see with this
are
1. I think the cache expiry time is specified in seconds, and I can't see if
there is an indefinate (i.e. passing 0)
2. I think it holds the ftp connection open while it is mounted, which
wouldn't be good for the servers, with people holding connections open.

Any suggestions?
--
Steve Boddy

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