On Wed, Mar 22, 2017 at 08:08:28PM -0500, Richard Owlett wrote:
On 03/17/2017 08:47 AM, Richard Owlett wrote:As I have limited bandwidth, I install from DVDs. Also I frequently experiment with various options by doing a fresh install to a different partition. It is annoying to keep re-scanning a set of 13 DVDs. Where is the information stored? /etc/apt/sources.list is obvious, but where is the data about contents of each DVD stored? TIAIt had been suggested that all the needed information might be in /etc/apt/sources.list PLUS the /var/lib/apt directory It ain't :{
Looking at the source, apt-cdrom does a bunch of checks and then calls into pkgCdrom::Add()[1]. That does some more checks and then the interesting stuff seems to start around line 746.
The Configuration Database (TODO: Find where this is stored... Ah, I *think* that's the /var/lib/apt/cdroms.list mentioned earlier) is checked for existance of the CD and updated, if necessary. The next interesting part is at line 838 where the packages are copied. This seems to happen in IndexCopy::CopyPackages()[2] which, at line 97, creates a file in /var/cache/apt/archives/partial/ containing the contents of the cdrom.
[1] http://sources.debian.net/src/apt/1.4~rc2/apt-pkg/cdrom.cc/ [2] http://sources.debian.net/src/apt/1.4~rc2/apt-pkg/indexcopy.cc/So, in summary, I think you need /etc/apt/sources.list, /var/lib/apt *AND* /var/cache/apt/archives.
I'll scan the DVD's as I have an immediate need to add several packages to my current active install.About 18 months to 2 years ago someone had suggested in a totally unrelated thread a brute force method to trace file modifications which are either undocumented or incompletely documented. I'll search my personal archives for that methodology and apply it.As I have time available, I'll try to document the validity of any extension of that approach. Don't expect posts in the near term to this thread as I have projects with higher priority. Even for a retiree there only so many hours in a week ;/
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