HELP NEEDED ON OFFLINE SOFTWARE INSTALLATION[solved]

[trueleowdeo]

hi,
I liked the elegant linux mint 7 and even liked linuxmint 8 helena more, just one problem. OFFLINE SOFTWARE INSTALLATION.
Here is my scenario. I download some packages from the internet using

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sudo apt-get install <package_name>

And i found this great program called APTONCD which claims to save my downloaded packages so that i can restore them later. But when i tried creating the cd and restoring it, Things didnt work.
I tried manually opening the cd and i found .deb pakages which i tried to double click but they need me to connect to the internet to download some "dependencies". Any one know how to save your packages and install them on other computers without having to download dependecies all over again?
Thanks
edited: Also could someone explain to a newbie why developers in linux dont put all dependecies into one .deb package such that we would never need to get stuff from the internet first, it makes more sense to me if the user just has to double click the .deb package and all the magic happens.( some how like windows setups.)

[nebcanuck]

I'm not quite sure what you're asking so far as installing packages without installing the dependencies goes. As far as I know, you always need to have the dependencies installed in order to install (or at least to install and run) the packages in Linux.

As for the reason why Linux developers don't package them all together, the main reason is redundancy and inefficiency. The file system in Linux is set up differently than in Windows. In Windows, each program comes with its own separate folder, which contains each of the dlls required to run the program. If multiple programs need the same dll, each program has to contain the dll in its folder. In Linux, on the other hand, the structure is such that any dependencies are referred to by programs that require them, so that common functions can all be stored in a single location with every program that needs to access that function just running off of the common binaries.

This, as far as I can tell, reduces the amount of space used on your hard drive, as well as reducing fragmentation considerably. If I'm not mistaken, it, along with the file system type, is the main reason that Linux doesn't need defragmenting. Someone can feel free to correct me if I'm wrong about any of this!

[DrHu]

And i found this great program called APTONCD which claims to save my downloaded packages so that i can restore them later. But when i tried creating the cd and restoring it, Things didnt work.

What didn't work, the package didn't install, it was corrupted, the media was unreadable, which effect was being observed, or which effect did you see

The purpose of aptoncd is to create a removable repository, that you then install as a set (from the cd/dvd, media you used to create the aptoncd image)
http://www.ubuntugeek.com/create-backup ... buntu.html
http://www.go2linux.org/aptoncd-create- ... -CD-or-ISO
http://maketecheasier.com/backup-instal ... 2009/06/13

• Try using aptoncd as it was designed and see if that works..

Other choices you may have
Clonezilla
http://clonezilla.org/
remastersys
http://www.geekconnection.org/remasters ... stool.html

[DrHu]

In Windows, each program comes with its own separate folder, which contains each of the dlls required to run the program. If multiple programs need the same dll, each program has to contain the dll in its folder.

Used to be true, depends on which windows OS we reference..
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Side-by-Side_Assembly

There are of course, system .dlls' in the windows OS directories (folders), used by all applications..

[garda]

edited: Also could someone explain to a newbie why developers in linux dont put all dependecies into one .deb package such that we would never need to get stuff from the internet first, it makes more sense to me if the user just has to double click the .deb package and all the magic happens.( some how like windows setups.)

Because it will be an overkill. Imagine if, for example, Firefox and Xulrunner are distributed in a single package. If there's a small fix to Xulrunner, the entire package will have to be rebuilt, redistributed, and re-downloaded. Shipping Firefox and Xulrunner into two separate packages makes applying fixes to either one of them more efficient.

Anyway, you can copy everything in /var/cache/apt/archives from one to computer to another to avoid redundant downloading of packages.

[garda]

Forgot to say this:

If you want to make a local offline repository, you can do so with dpkg-scanpackages:
1. Become root:

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sudo su

2. Create a directory accessible by root:

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mkdir /var/local-repo

3. Copy all the deb files into the directory.
4. Enter this command to index all the packages:

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dpkg-scanpackages /var/local-repo/ /dev/null | gzip -9c > /var/local-repo/Packages.gz

5. Add your local repo to sources.list

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cp /etc/apt/sources.list /etc/apt/sources.list.old

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gksu gedit /etc/apt/sources.list

6. Add these lines to the bottom of the file:

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## +++ Local Repo (/var/local-repo/) +++
deb file:/var/local-repo ./

7. This step is optional, but you might want to comment out each line that has http:// in it.
8. Save the changes.
9. Refresh your package list:

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apt-get update

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exit

10. Done. Now you can install the packages from Synaptic, without having to figure out the order of installation yourself -- Synaptic will do that for you.

Source: Debian Manuals - Debian Repository HOWTO

[Rizla]

I'm not sure whether you'll be interested, but I've just put together a tutorial called:

"Howto backup ALL of your Packages/Software to another PC"

http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.p ... 99#p247099

Rizla