On Sun, 11 Feb 2007 14:55:44 -0700 Admin <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > I download a 128MB network installer iso so that I could use it to > download binariy and source files one at a time from over the internet.
Usually you only need binary packages, you don't need the sources unless you want to compile your own stuff. > Being new to Debian I tried to understand this process and came to > understand that all binary files are considered to be a "package" sort Packages usually come with binary or source (hence binary or source packages), documentation, info such as what dependancies are needed to satisfy the install (for instance, a program may need to use library routines that are in a library package, and/or source packeges would need the development versions of these libraries, and so forth). > In other words, I need a Debian system up and running (which I don't > have at the present time) and even then the packaged binaries and > sources will be unpacked and placed into the system. What I was after Yes, but you don't need the whole archive to install a basic system. As other posters have indicated, the packages are sorted in popularity order, such that most everything people want are on the first two or three cd's. The diffiulty for you would be how to do afterinstall "maintenance" - adding new pakages, upgrading, and so forth, which in any event would be slow over a dialup connection. For most of the stuff will be on a cdrom (or dvd) that you just add as a repository with 'apt-cdrom'. Some won't be, of course, depending on how many cd's you need. > directed by some kind of menu. This is fine, if that is how it happens, > but I want my own updateable archive from which this "network > installer" can feed . I don't see the point. The updates are fairly small differences to the main chunk (or pool). Of course, small is relative. My last update on etch (I normally do them weekly) was about 100 megabytes. That could take about 10-12 hours to get over the modem. One of the posters estimated the 'pool' (entire debian tree) as about 256 gigs. And you don't need it -- or even want to store that much - since that's abour 45.5 DVDs. And it is as I understand it, stable/testing/unstable for all the architecture (CPU types) that debian supports. You'd, for instance, only need the i386 part of the pool. What you probably want/need is the first snapshot DVD of the etch (testing) distribution. I realize that you dislike snapshot releasws but these days, etch is pretty polished, and if you use jigdo-lite you master the image on say a dvd-rw, then run it again later, it will only update the parts that have changed, and you write that back to the dvd-rw. That's about the first 7 cd's, and it if used as an apt-cdrom source, you can do the install off of it as well as add new packages from it at a later date, without using the network. For your purposes, I don't believe the netinstall CD would be the way to go, as it is too small, and really intended for people who have a fast enough connection that can get all the other stuff over the internet (or have a local repository on their LAN, but of course, you have to populate that from somewhere outside the LAN in the first place, so the point is moot if you've only a dialup connection). In other words, a local LAN repository would make sense in a university or datacenter of a corporation, where you have a number of machines to keep up to date. > Python, Lisp, and many others; It lookis like I would have to (separate > from the installer and separate from the FTP ) gather these binaries and > sources one at a time site by site. Or have I got something very wrong??? Nearly everything you need would be part of the repository (of course, there are several to choose from) so you don't have to go out and look for them, unless: * they are extremely new and you want the most current version, or * they don't exist in the repositories (specialty or other stuff) > Thanks Ted. -- ------------------------------------------------------------------------ David E. Fox Thanks for letting me [EMAIL PROTECTED] change magnetic patterns [EMAIL PROTECTED] on your hard disk. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
