Re: Bug#32595: remove obsolete and confusing acquisition methods: harddisk, mounted, cdrom, nfs
Jules Bean <jmlb2@hermes.cam.ac.uk> writes:
>
>On 31 Jan 1999, Martin Mitchell wrote:
>> 1) A m68k computer with a 60Mb debian installation. Normally I use the nfs
>> method. Apt is just not feasible, it wants to copy everything over before
>> it starts - there simply isn't space on the disk to do this. Also the
>> runtime cost of starting dpkg on m68k is very high, so dselect is often
>> much faster, rather than apt's invoking dpkg separately for many packages.
>> (I am aware apt is more correct, however in practice so many invocations
>> of dpkg are rarely necessary)
>
>Hm. I'm pretty sure the apt with a file:/ URL doesn't copy, it installs
>straight from the remote. Or is this not true?
>
>> 2) A local mirror, hand constructed. No extra or useless packages in there.
>> Apt doesn't construct or handle this type of arrangement well by default.
>> The mounted method deals with this just fine.
>
>What problems does apt give? (I assume you're running dpkg-scanpackages
>to build local packages file?)
Having to run dpkg-scanpackages manually is a bit of a pain
Dpkg-mountable asks for a local package directory and will then scan
it automatically every time.
Having to work out that you need to run the following every time you
update the local packages file
dpkg-scanpackages . /dev/null | gzip >Packages.gz
and then add the following to your sources.list file:
deb file:///usr/local/debian-archive/ /
takes some working out. Answering yes to the question "generate a
package file for me" is easier.
Including the above information in the manual - if it hasn't found its
way there would be a useful start.
>
>Incidentally, I'm not claiming Martin's objections are foundless. I'm
>interested to see what limitations apt has (and then we can request them
>as features).
One other point. It isn't immediately obvious from the web site that you can
intall directly by ftp[1] without manually downloading the packages you
need and then installing them as separate steps.
The web site links to
ftp://ftp.debian.org/debian/dists/stable/main/disks-i386/current/ch-install-methods.html
which doesn't mention installing using ftp as a possibility (and
neither do the frozen and unstable versions). Writing some notes for
this bit of the document would be useful[2] (if it is thought that apt is
ready for this sort of use).
[1]Useful in UK academia where you have a fast network connection to a
mirror site.
[2] I wish I had the time to do this.
Chris
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