/var/lib/apt/lists/partial -> ../*Packages

[jidanni@jidanni.org]

I have copied /var/lib/apt/lists/partial/* to another machine, but try
as I might, I cannot get apt to apply those files to ../*Packages. Apt
bombs out if it cannot connect to the network. Yes I will connect it
to the network, but not today.

How can I trick apt into thinking that it has just retrieved those
files itself, and now should apply them?

You see using APT::Get::List-Cleanup false I now have plenty of
/var/lib/apt/lists/partial/* diff files that I can copy to an offline
machine, to avoid copying the larger ../*Packages files.

But on that offline machine there's no way to do an apt-get check or
"apt-get --no-download update" to have those diff files applied to
their corresponding ../*Packages files. apt bombs out if it can
connect to the network.

Do I have to make a script to apply those diff ed(1) scripts by hand?!

Here is the files I copied to the offline machine:
find /var/lib/apt/lists/ -type f ! -name \*_Packages ! -name lock ! \
-name \*.ed -ctime -1