Re: Storing whole sarge disto on a HD partition?

[Hugo Vanwoerkom <hvw59601@care2.com>]

Scott Fitzgerald wrote:
> I'm a dial up user who purchased sarge on a 14 cd set.
>
> I'm buying a laptop and was wondering, is there a faq or howto anyplace on
> copying the whole distribution to a partition on a HD?  It would be great
> to be away from home, and if a package is recommended to me to just be able
> to log into root and run apt-get while on the road.

I do that.
1. use mkisofs to create an iso file for each of the 14 cd's
2. mount xxx.iso -r -t iso9660 -o loop /mnt/Debian3.1/CD1
...

Note you have to create sufficient loop devices to mount all 14:
rmmod loop
modprobe loop max_loop=14
C=8; for C in `seq 8 14`; do mknod /dev/loop$C b 7 $C; done

It really is not necessary to mount all 14: I have only gotten to need 
10 CD's. I have 9 mounted and I run synaptic on that.

Adjust your sourcelist:
deb file:/mnt/Debian3.1/CD1/debian sarge main contrib
...

run apt-get update

Makes installing anything a breeze: use it all the time.
In fact I still run off 14 CD's I bought when Sarge was still testing. 
Where I live they won't deliver the 14 CD's.

HTH
H