On Wed, 14 May 1997, Andreas Tille wrote: > On Tue, 13 May 1997, Portuesi Simone wrote: > > > I'd like just to add one thing to it, it'll be confortable (at least for > > me) that the mirroring can be done from another computer. I'll explain > > better: you che the Packages file on a PC connected to internet, bring > > it to a PC not connected to the net, the script will determine the files > ^^^^^^^^^^ > Sorry, I didn't followed this discussion in the past. What script > would do such a job. I would like to have a automagical mechanism > to update my box at home. This time I do it manually (using MC and > compare each directory with the directories on a ZIP disk I updated on > my net-connected PC.
This shouldn't be too hard to do, just by using mirror. You could also do it by writing a sh or perl script to copy relevant files, but that will involve doing a lot of comparisons on directory contents, filenames, and debian package versions....in other words, here's an easy partial solution - other methods are probably a lot harder :-) Digression: I always set up my debian mirrors so that it goes to ~ftp/debian. Then I have a symlink /debian pointing to ~ftp/debian...the symlink is merely a convenience to navigate the directories from the command line and it makes it easier to nfs mount the mirror on any new machine i'm building: 'mkdir /debian ; mount -t nfs HOSTNAME:/debian /debian'. Anyway, back to using mirror. I'll assume you've already got mirror running, and that it is mirroring debian to /home/ftp/debian. I'll also assume that your zip disk is mounted at /zip. What you need to do is create another mirror file in /etc/mirror/packages. Call it, say, /etc/mirror/packages/zipdrive. configure it that the remote_host is 'localhost', and remote_dir is '/home/ftp/debian'. Also configure it so that the local_dir is /zip. Zip drives aren't very big, so you'll have to be ruthless with exclude patterns - set it up to get ONLY the distribution(s) you are interested in (bo, hamm, frozen, stable, unstable, non-free, contrib, etc). Exclude the source/, and msdos/ directories. flatten sym links. Also exclude binaries you're not interested in - e.g. you can save a lot of disk space if you're not running X or don't need any of the development tools. A jazz drive would be better :-) Then run 'mirror -F /etc/mirror/packages/zipdrive'. Mirror will then mirror your ftp archive of debian onto your zip disk. When you get it home, mount the zip drive, tell dselect to use the mounted file-system method, run Update from the menu, and then go through the usual Select, Install, Configure cycle. BTW, this will work even if you don't have a local ftp mirror of debian. Instead of pointing mirror at 'localhost', point it at 'ftp.debian.org' or your nearest debian mirror. -- craig sanders networking consultant Available for casual or contract temporary autonomous zone system administration tasks. -- TO UNSUBSCRIBE FROM THIS MAILING LIST: e-mail the word "unsubscribe" to [EMAIL PROTECTED] . Trouble? e-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] .