On Thu, Mar 20, 2008 at 03:05:17PM -0700, Michael Paulsen wrote:
> On 3/20/08, Tom Goulet <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > On 3/20/08, Michael Paulsen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> >
> > > Debian Etch now has over 30 CD's. I'm bored with CD swapping every
> > > time I want to install a new package. Is it possible to merge the CD's
> > > to my hard drive and direct APT or DPKG to use the hard drive instead
> > > of all the CD's when installing new packages? What would the be the
> > > easiest way to do this?
> >
> > mount /cdrom
> > cp -R /cdrom .
> > umount /cdrom
> >
> > Repeat.
And when one has the contents of the thirty CDs on one's hard
drive, what then?
Forgive me for writing about this at some length, since I'm faced with
the same dilemma. My goals: I want to upgrade from sarge to etch,
and to this end, I bought three(3) DVDs, instead of thirty(30) CDs.
I also have a new USB-connected DVD Reader/Writer. A hurdle in the
way is: my BIOS won't let me boot from a USB device.
There is a question at the end of this account, by the way<G>.
I should add: after an upgrade succeeds, I want the capability to
apt-cache search for something, and then apt-get install that
something, with the standard prompt: "Please insert DVD x in your
DVD device, and then press Enter . . "
I have been working on this for well over a week now, with substantial
help from experts in my D.C. area Linux community, using our E-lists
ma-linux and dclug. It seems that one can upgrade from sarge to etch
without rebooting. It also seems that one can set up the data-base
for later installs, described in the previous paragraph, before
installing.
I start with having my DVD Reader/Writer mentioned in my /etc/fstab.
It can be mounted on /media/dvd.
So I ran apt-cdrom -d /media/dvd add and this seems to have
run successfully. I was prompted to insert my new etch DVDs one
by one into the DVD Reader/Writer, and the DVDs were inspected and
information from them recorded(I'm not sure where!). So far, so
good.
I then went on to the actual upgrade. I ran apt-get update
which, as expected, returned me nothing.
I then ran apt-get dist-upgrade . I immediately received a
couple of screens full, listing stuff that would be upgraded, and
told that an extra 480meg of disk would be needed, did I wish to
proceed? Well, I had made sure that I had this space -- so far
so good -- so I entered Y.
Now comes the sick part: I immediately got a prompt: "Please insert
Debian GNU/Linux 4.0 r3 _Etch_ - Official i386 DVD Binary-1 20080217-11:31
into the drive '/cdrom/' and then press enter" ! ! ! I put the
called for DVD in the only place it would go, into my DVD Reader/Writer,
and pressed Enter. I got the same prompt back.
Finally my question: why? what did I do wrong? at one point the
upgrade process did seem to know about my DVD apparatus. And it knows
about the DVDs. But it can't make the connection, it seems.
Any suggestions as to how to fix this problem will be very gratefully
received!
Alan
--
Alan McConnell : http://patriot.net/users/alan
"The intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy."
Impeachment proceedings should be started immediately.
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