Re: Using loop devices in Debian
On 1/25/14, David <bouncingcats@gmail.com> wrote:
> Sorry for replying to myself again with further thoughts ...
So you should be! My god! Another Debian user trying to be helpful ...
what has the world come to!! Next we'll be offering further assistance
to those who get stuck...
> Another option to consider is to partition your hard drive and copy
> all the DVD/iso contents there, and then tell the installer to read
> the files from there while it is installing to a different partition
> on the same hard drive.
I agree that's a better option to the USB stick, if the OP is only
working on one computer, especially for an older PC.
If he wants his offline/local package pool accessible to more than one
PC, then some sort of external USB type option, or a network option,
would work.
Which reminds me: Richard, if you have a 'primary' PC which is your
workstation, with 2G or ram or more, you might consider running
virtualbox for your test installs, and that way you can run multiple
virtualbox instances and have fun learning about different networking
technologies too (without extra boxen of course) - eg dhcpd, httpd,
etc.
> Why am I offering these suggestions? Because from my own experience
> doing the same thing, anything you can do to avoid using dvd media or
> flash drives during the actual install is going to be a huge bonus for
> you, because installing off slow media is *very* slow comparing to
> installing of fast local media such as another partition on your hard
> drive or on another local machine.
> It can can reduce install time from many hours to minutes. Once you
> have done an install off fast media, you will see!
True. Another reason that I suggested that Richard just do "minimal"
install, and reboot and use his local package repo - putting that repo
on a partition on the test PC HDD is definitely a faster and more
pleasant experience to a USB repo. But USB is _much_ better than
optical media.
> This applies especially if your install process has interactive
> questions or prompts, because you don't have to spend very long
> periods of time wondering when they are going to appear. That becomes
> very tedious if you have to repeat the exercise more than once.
>
> The more times you are intending to run a trial install (and it's my
> impression that is your intention), the more this advice is relevant!
True. Ideally for Richard I think would be a fast workstation with
virtualbox, a minimal install CD ISO image attached to the virtualbox,
and a local httpd server serving up a local debian package repo to the
test VMs. That's what I would do, and others here too I'm sure.
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