2009/5/23 Chris Bannister <mockingb...@earthlight.co.nz> > On Mon, May 18, 2009 at 01:51:45PM +0200, Raffaele Morelli wrote: > > Hi you all, > > > > I have 3 debian boxes (two i386 and one amd64) which are not connected to > > the network so I usually do upgrades by downloading weekly generated dvd > iso > > images, burning images to a dvd-rw and running apt-cdrom add && > apt-upgrade. > > > > My question is: can I fool apt in order to avoid burning dvd-rw each > week? > > > > I am not lazy but I do this regularly and burning two dvd-iso for > different > > archs sometimes makes me crazy because of errors, dvd's failures or data > > corruption. > > > > Any suggestion is appreciated. > > I too am interested in this. If there was some way to simulate an > "apt-get update" by downloading the Packages.gz file and putting that on > the non-networked machine and doing the magic to that file the same way > that "apt-get update" does on a networked machine. > > Then all you need to do is: > > 1. apt-get dist-upgrade > 2. answer no. > 3. take note of the packages it wants to download. > 4. Download the packages from a network machine > + go to packages.debian.org/<package-name> > + download .deb + put on USB stick. > 5. Put downloaded packages into /var/cache/apt/archives/ > of non-networked machine > 6. Run "apt-get dist-upgrade" > When it says "Need to get 0MB/XXXMB of archives." > - answer yes.
This is what I usually do on a machine connected to the network by a 56k modem. I only do apt-get update then apt-get --print-uris upgrade give me a txt file with the necessary info about upgradable packages (only a one line cmd is needed to get a usable and wget-able file). > > It will now dist-upgrade normally > > Have a look at apt-zip for steps 1-6. > > It seems to be non-trivial to simulate an "apt-get update" :( > > This doesn't work: :( > > I wonder if you can copy: > > /var/lib/apt/lists/debian.attica.net.nz_debian_dists_lenny_contrib_binary-i386_Packages > [..] > > /var/lib/apt/lists/www.debian-multimedia.org_dists_lenny_main_binary-i386_Packages > > from a networked machine to a non-networked machine? > this is hard (for me at least) to do but I will try something this week end. cheers -r
