On 2010-01-11 at 14:59:19 -0500, Albretch Mueller wrote: > I need to: > ~ > 1) use apt-get and let it handle all dependencies and > ~ > 2) somehow make apt-get leave all downloaded deb archives in the > <local directory path> I have > ~ > How can you do that?
I feel inadequate to respond to this post, but perhaps I can at least give a partial answer. I hope someone else who is more knowledgeable than I am in this area (which doesn't take much) can give a better answer. But here goes. I usually use a combination of "dselect update" and "aptitude -R full-upgrade" to perform an upgrade. I prefer "dselect update" over "apt-get update" or "aptitude update" because it downloads package descriptions for all available packages, not just installed packages. I can then use, for example, dpkg-query -p xxx|less where xxx is the name of any package, installed or not, and view its description. I use aptitude rather than apt-get to perform the upgrade because it seems to be much better at resolving complex package dependency relationships than apt-get. The -R option prevents recommended packages from being treated as prerequisites. As for keeping the downloaded package files, (.deb files), downloaded packages are kept by default in /var/cache/apt/archives. If you run aptitude clean before you start, then all the .deb files in /var/cache/apt/archives will be from your most recent run and you can copy them wherever you want afterwards. There are two caveats, however. (1) package files read from CD or DVD are not downloaded to the package cache directory first: they are installed directly from the CD or DVD. Therefore, make sure that your /etc/apt/sources.list file does not contain any CD or DVD entries, and (2) You must make sure that the partition which contains the package cache directory does not get low on disk space during the upgrade. Otherwise aptitude might attempt a partial cleanup of the package cache during the upgrade. In other words, it might erase package files that have already been installed to prevent a "disk full" condition. I hope this helps. Maybe someone else can provide you with a better answer. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
