> The way I read the articles is that the student's machine is on the > Internet with just a very slow connection. > The student runs Synaptic to figure out the dependencies and to > generate a script with instructions for downloading the required > .debs
Your interpretation sounds more valid than mine. My kludge was to use my fast Internet connection to find out what .debs are needed. However, this is done on *my* machine, not the student's. This could easily cause problems. > Although some of the details may need to be worked out, I think this > process holds a lot of promise. I'd love to see a demo of this some > time. I think the devil's in the details, and the more I think about it, this solution *doesn't* hold a lot of promise. Students need a relatively simple way of getting software. Heck, this method scares *me* and I'm an IT guy. Perhaps an "easy" solution would be just to have students bring in their CPUs for update and installation of software that doesn't already have an existing .deb package? Plug in the computers, start Synaptic and choose "update". Then, get any software we want from the Repositories. Then, download any third-party software. --Nate --- In [email protected], "Robert Citek" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > On Dec 11, 2007 12:11 AM, nneff <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > I then figure that I could go to Synaptic package manager and tell > > Synaptic to download all the .deb packages that TuxType requires. I > > then put them on a CD, and give it to student. Student then uses the > > CD to install TuxType. > > OK. That's what I thought and that's where my question is. So there > are at least two computers involved: the student's machine that needs > a package installed and has slow/no internet access and another > machine that has fast internet access. How does Synaptic know what > .deb packages are required on the student's machine in order to > download them? Does this process assume that the computer doing the > download has the identical setup as the computer needing the packages? > > For example, let's assume that TuxType depends on one other package, > e.g. foo.deb. Let's also assume that the computer in the shop already > has foo.deb installed but the machine at the student's home does not. > If Synaptic is run on a shop computer, will it download foo.deb? What > if TuxType is already installed on a shop computer, will Synaptic > download it and its dependencies anyways? > > The way I read the articles is that the student's machine is on the > Internet with just a very slow connection. The student runs Synaptic > to figure out the dependencies and to generate a script with > instructions for downloading the required .debs. The student then > runs that script on a machine with a fast internet connection to > download the .debs, which are then burned to a CD. The CD is then > inserted into the student's machine and Synaptic installs the > packages. > > Although some of the details may need to be worked out, I think this > process holds a lot of promise. I'd love to see a demo of this some > time. > > Regards, > - Robert >
