Re: offline apt-get update?

[Joachim Trinkwitz <jtr@uni-bonn.de>]

Vincent Murphy <murphyv@student.cs.ucc.ie> writes:

>  the closest thing to what i want requires that you have apt-get on the
> connected machine.   i don't (it's a windows machine with wget).
> 
>  to repeat: i need to manually download the Packages.gz files from the
> archives listed in sources.list, which isn't a problem.  but what i don't
> know how to do is make apt-get `read' those files an update itself so `apt-get
> upgrade' uses the newer Packages.gz files.

Try apt-zip or apt-move (both in potato):

$ apt-cache show apt-zip 
Package: apt-zip
Version: 0.7
Priority: extra
Section: admin
Maintainer: Yann Dirson <dirson@debian.org>
Architecture: all
Filename: dists/unstable/main/binary-i386/admin/apt-zip_0.7.deb
Size: 9204
MD5sum: aaae44048b9c8d6a5189cfb4ec6d6891
Description: Update a non-networked computer using apt and a removable media
 These scripts simplify the process of using dselect and apt on your Debian box.
 One generates a `fetch' script (supporting backends such as wget and
 lftp, in a modular extensible way) to be run on a host with better
 connectivity, check space constraints of you removable media, and
 then install the package on your Debian box.
installed-size: 32

$ apt-cache show apt-move
Package: apt-move
Version: 3.0-8
Priority: optional
Section: admin
Maintainer: Gregory T. Norris <adric@debian.org>
Depends: awk, bc (>= 1.05a-6), dpkg-dev (>= 1.4.1.6)
Suggests: rsync (>= 2.3.2-1)
Architecture: i386
Filename: dists/unstable/main/binary-i386/admin/apt-move_3.0-8.deb
Size: 28450
MD5sum: 37202cc18f7c5d4183b23a49c16247cd
Description: Move cache of Debian packages into a mirror hierarchy
 apt-move is used to move a collection of Debian package files into a
 proper archive hierarchy of the form debian/dists/...  It is intended
 as a tool to help manage the apt-get(8) file cache, but could be
 configured to work with any collection of Debian packages.
 .
 Running apt-move periodically will assist in managing the resulting
 partial mirror by optionally removing obsolete packages, and creating
 valid local Packages.gz files.  It can also optionally employ rsync(1)
 to build a partial or complete local mirror of a Debian binary
 distribution (including an ``installed-packages only'' mirror).
installed-size: 77

Greetings,
joachim