On Thu, May 13, 2021 at 06:53:28PM +0200, to...@tuxteam.de wrote: > On Thu, May 13, 2021 at 03:47:34PM +0000, Andrew M.A. Cater wrote: > > Hi, Andrew > > thanks for chiming in > > > If you _really_ want to have one .iso to mount - this is where the 16G .iso > > or the BluRay sized disks help - one image that holds a larger chunk of the > > whole archive. > > Yes, one big .iso seems to be more comfortable than a whole bunch of > smaller ones. > > > apt-cdrom will effectively read the index(es) off the .iso of what packages > > there are and will cache that. > > I understand that: this is the "iso sister" of apt(-get) update. > > My question: it does operate on the (already mounted) .iso image, right? > Or does it do the (loopback and) mounting on its own? > No, it relies on the image to be mounted. I last did this in anger with real CDs / DVDs. A package install would prompt for the DVD to be phsyically inserted into the disk drive [/mnt/cdrom probably at that stage - physical drives automounted] and then read the list of packages off them. If you were doing a large install e.g. Gnome / KDE, you might have to physically change disks (sometimes more than once) so DVD1 -> DVD2 -> DVD1 -> DVD3, for example.
If the DVD drive autolocked, then you might need to run an eject command in there. In practice, queuing up a few mount/umount/eject commands and then runnng the apt-get install commands or whatever by using an up arrow command to repeat wasn't a problem. DVDs loop mounted would be less of a problem, as outlined. > > If you have multiple DVDs, it will prompt > > you to > > change them - so, actually, you could mount the DVD images in separate > > directories under /media as individual mount points and then run apt-cdrom > > to index them all with Tomas -d switch, as outlined above. > > Yes, that makes sense. Perhaps dedicate one directory to each install > medium (/media/installers/buster/cd-23 or something). > > > For me - I find that a netinst - and internet bandwidth - is all that I need > > but I recognise that that's not everyone's cup of $BEVERAGE. > > ISTR that Richard's Internet connectivity isn't... stellar. Sitting behind > a >= 4Mbit spoils us, it seems :-) > > Cheers > - t All best, as ever, Andy C.
