Apt-get and Swaret on Dial-Up

APT-GET & SWARET ON DIAL-UP

Apt-Get:

These were the questions:
Can these downloads be broken up into smaller chunks and downloaded in groups?
What can one do to avoid a total reinstall, etc. in the event of a crash? That would be a tremendous task for someone on dialup?

QUOTE (Jodef @ forum 2004)

Pclos synaptic saves the packages to /var/cache/apt/archives when you choose to execute in synaptic there is a small checkbox at the bottom check download package files only this d/ls package but doesn't automatically install them. If this option is not checked once the install is performed the package is deleted from that directory. You can then copy the packages from that directory and save them wherever you choose.

To reinstall the packages you can just copy the packages to /var/cache/apt/archives and run synaptic just as you normally would but because the files are available locally in the designated directory it will not need to redownload the files but it will install them. At least in theory I have tested this with one or two packages but not with a whole upgrade but I think it should work the same.

A few handy commands if you use apt-get on the commandline:

"apt-get -d kde" would only download the KDE packages and not yet install them so you can burn them to CD first

"apt-get check" verifies that there are no broken dependencies . . .

"apt-get upgrade" will only get the regular updates . . ( you get to say Y or N )

"apt-get dist-upgrade" will totally upgrade your distro to the latest version

"apt-get --help" for more info on apt-get

Swaret:

For Swaret the packages get stored in /var/swaret/sources The command "swaret --get KDE" will only download the packages and save them to /var/swaret/sources. Interrupted downloads will be checked and downloaded again, swaret performs a checksum on the packages. So if you burn the packages in /var/swaret/sources to CD you can always recover them.

"swaret --get kde" will only download the kde pakages

"swaret --dep" will check dependencies

"swaret --resume" will resume broken downloads

See also the dial-up remarks in the Swaret Tip

Bruno

-- Mar 18 2004 ( Revised Dec 11 2005 ) --