On 2/5/21 9:54 AM, Richard Owlett wrote:
You can--and in my opinion, should--purchase an external optical drive. They cost somewhere in the $20 range. I have an LG model GP08LU11. It can read and write CD, DVD, and it will do LightScribe. I don't know if this model is still available, but LG does have a couple models listed. Putting the request into Google produces a slew of drives.I wish to do custom Debian install on a machine *WITHOUT*: 1. functional mechanical CD/DVD drive. 2. without internet access.One can purchase a flash drive containing ISO images of all installation DVDs of the desired architecture. It is straight forward to do a default install after copying dvd1.iso to a flash drive.Resulting problems include: 1. undesired programs clutter machine (e.g. LibreOffice). 2. project critical software cannot be installed as Synaptic asks for a non-existent DVD be inserted in a non-existent drive.
--doug
One vendor has a shell program which loop mounts the ISO files in such a way that *IF* you have the purchased flash drive installed you can use Synaptic.The Debian documentation does not appear to describe how apt &/or Synaptic can access ISO files on dedicated partition.Are the instructions to create a "local repository" composed of appropriate ISO files?TIA