using CDs to install from hard drive.
I am testing some disks to send to a friend. He has a lot of disk
space, as many people do. I suggested just installing the preselected
packages using multi-cd, which only uses disk 1 . Then mount each CD
and copy them to an archive on your hard drive, point apt at it, and
you have a much easier way to install the rest, via dselect or with
apt as stand alone. Unfortunately, the CDs do not have any intact
Packages files from the archive. I explained in my notes how to cat
the two main Packages files from disk one and two together, and how to
save the non-free and contrib Packages files, and then how to install
them in the archive on the hard drive. This works, but would add a
lot of confusion for the newbie.
It would be nice to have some more automated support for
copying the CDs to a hard drive, because it make package installation
more painless. Its getting a bit late for this release however ! Even
putting the intact packages files in some top level directory with a
note would help. You could also tell the user how to regenerate them,
but I could not find this clearly documented anywhere.
I have installed a couple of times and many packages, and I
haven't had a major problem or unresolved dependecy issue. Good Job
--
John Lapeyre <lapeyre@physics.arizona.edu>
Tucson,AZ http://www.physics.arizona.edu/~lapeyre
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