On Sun, 08 Feb 2004 07:53:13 +0800, Dan Jacobson wrote:
> [Say] we can't do apt-get dist-upgrade over our puny modem. We must go to
> town to burn the files onto a CDROM and take them back to install it.
>
> Sure, we could do apt-get dist-upgrade --print-uris, or use apt-zip, but
> that creates a list that gets stale in the few days it takes us to get to
> town... we'll miss the latest upgrades.
>
> Therefore there should be an "apt.debian.org" web server to compute what
> we need on the spot. One would give it various detail about our machine,
> and a sources.list and e.g. dpkg --get-selections output... all of which
> we have taken to town. It would spit out a fetch list of URIs.
>
> OK, I suppose 99% of people are better connected than my scenario, and
> perhaps this is only applicable to the third world.
I have been using debian for a number of years. I have done several
installations from scratch as I have built new machines. I have done
*all* installs over a 56K modem. I am currently running sarge. I keep my
system up to date by running apt-get (usually dist-upgrade) on a daily
basis.
Apart from a couple of overnight marathons to get first the base system
and then X installed, I usually see much less than 10MB of upgrades at any
one time. In other words, rarely does a dist-upgrade take even 30 mins,
unless something big (like OpenOffice) is upgraded.
Unless you have a broken modem, or a noisy telephone line which results in
very low negotiated connection speeds, it's really not a very big deal to
keep a system up to date (or even do an install from scratch) over a
standard dial up connection. The key is to run daily upgrades.
I suppose that keeping a sid installation up to date would be more time
consuming, though.
--
....................paul
It is important to realize that any lock can be picked with a big
enough hammer.
-- Sun System & Network Admin manual
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