Any idea about this? Apparently, Keryx and AptonCD don't work with Ubuntu 11.04. (And I'm not sure that AptonCD would be the most efficient way even if it did work.) I Googled Mrk's site for help but couldn't find something relevant. I've got a bunch of stuff to read on the topic and will see if I can distill some sense from all of it. I don't need a GUI-based solution. I just don't want to be in a position of having the net drop on me while doing the actual updating. I figure that downloading the files and dependencies first is safer.
http://manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages/natty/man8/apt-offline.8.html DESCRIPTION apt-offline brings offline package management functionality to Debian based system. It can be used to download packages and its dependencies to be installed later on (or required to update) a disconnected machine. Packages can be downloaded from a different connected machine. It can also fetch bug reports for the packages that are downloaded. Unless the -h/-v or --help/--version options are given, one of the get, set or install commands must be provided.
apt-get always downloads dependencies before installing/upgrading a specific package. Packages won't install with broken dependencies unless you manually override. If you are still worried then apt-get can download updates without installing using the "--download-only" option. These can be installed offline at a later date in the normal manner. Cheers, Nick
I couldn't really find this issue answered to my satisfaction: can anything go wrong if the net drops during either of these steps: sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get upgrade ? That, in short, is my worry which I'm hoping to address by trying this roundabout route.
apt-get update only updates the database of packages - no worries there. apt-get upgrade does the download and install of packages and as per above is safe. Cheers, Nick
Ubuntu 11.04 will work with AptOnCD (not as smoothly as it does with Maverick or Lucid) if you install hal in synaptic. They removed hal for version 11.04. I use AptOnCD for all off-line installs. Later...
vasa....having experienced net drops during updates, I observed that it resumes from the stage where it was disconnected.
Thank You! That's a large part of what I wanted to know. I've been lucky so far in that the net hasn't yet dropped on me from the first time during installation of 11.04 from LiveCD and during other subsequent updates. Since I did it in late August, there was a whopping list of updates (and what's with those language packs?) and I didn't breathe freely until everything was done and the reboot was perfect and Unity 3D played nice on the actual install. I wish Ubuntu divided the two processes: installation and updating. It's fine for people with fast net connections that don't ever drop but for others who are at the mercy of so many things, the installation can be quite stress-inducing. I've already started worrying over how best to do 11.10. There are two schools -- upgrade over the existing 11.04 versus fresh install. I'm leaning towards a fresh install. I have no worries about getting the .iso by torrent. It's all the fun stuff after that ...
Living in the land where net drops are part of life, I well relate to your fear and share the same apprehensions, been through that many a times, one of the reasons I stick to LTS
But that's no "fun". That's why I want to get a solid way of doing at least the version upgrade / fresh install off-line. Of course, the April 2012 release is supposed to be the next LTS and that's not so far off.
This is a nice page as well: http://www.debian-administration.org/article/Offline_Package_Management_for_APT
I just updated Firefox to 7.0.1 the regular way. I still have not decided on this whole off-line business because if a dropped net connection doesn't result in anything "breaking", it may not be necessary.
