Re: Merging distribution CDs

[Pat Mahoney <pat7@gmx.net>]

On Thu, Jun 15, 2000 at 03:03:40PM +0100, Moore, Paul wrote:
> I have a set of four potato unofficial CDs, and a massive hard disk, and I'm
> bored of swapping CDs. What is the best way of copying the full contents of
> the CDs onto my hard disk so that I can install off there?
> 
> I assume that
> 
>     mkdir -p /dist/cd[1-4]
>     mount /cdrom
>     (cd /cdrom && tar cf - .) | (cd /dist/cd1 && tar xf -)
>     # repeat 3 more times
> 
> works, with appropriate sources.list lines, but can I merge the CDs, to make
> a single directory tree - ideally in such a way that I could use this as a
> base for a mirror of the FTP site and then update regularly...
> 
> Thanks for any suggestions,
> Paul.
> 

I'm assumming two of the disks are source disks, and the other two
binary.  Unless you want to install every possible package along with
the source packages (no one does) then you only need the one first
binary disk.

But, if you insist, apt supports file:// in addition to ftp.  Edit
your /etc/apt/sources.list.

Look at apt-move for merging the cd's into one.  Not sure how it
works.  It also has stuff about maintaing a partial mirror, but,
again I am not familiar with it.

Something tells me this is more work than swapping disks.  Once you
install the stuff you want there shouldn't be much more to do.  And I
think apt is smart enough to ask for only one disk change.  But if
you want to quickly install stuff you missed the first time, it might
be handy.

-- 
Pat Mahoney  <pat7@gmx.net>


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