ubuntu-ngo team mailing list archive

[Rory McCann <rory@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On 29/06/09 17:13, Bjoern Hassler wrote:
>>> house over the weekend to resurrect apt-zeroconf:
>>> http://castrojo.wordpress.com/2009/06/27/resurrecting-apt-zeroconf/
>>>
>> Something like apt-zeroconfig would be very helpful to spread the
>> bandwidth around.
>>
>> However there is one use case that it doesn't solve, which is cases
>> where someone has 1 (or 10) computers in location A (eg a school they
>> work in), and there is one internet café in the town that has internet
>> access. The only connection those computers have to the internet is over
>> sneakernet.
> 
> Agreed, that's important.  Putting packages onto CD for installation
> elsewhere is also mentioned on the ubuntu ngo wiki pages.
> 
> Suppose I have an Ubuntu installation (without internet) that I want to
> update. How would this work, and how user friendly is it?
> 
> Here's a scenario: Could you somehow write the state of a particular
> Ubuntu installation to a 'config' file, where this file would contain
> the versions of all your packages? Then, you take this file with you, to
> a place with good bandwidth, and download all the updates you need?
> 
> To make this very usable, perhaps there could be package manager like
> application (an "offline package manager"), that doesn't work with the
> system packages, but works with such a config file instead? I.e. it
> first writes the config file, and later (on a different computer) lets
> you load up the config file again, to see what updates are available,
> and what other applications you can install. All those are not
> installed, but downloaded instead, and can be burnt to disk, ready for
> installation. (Ideally with a handy installer program, perhaps via the
> same "offline package manager").
> 
> There may of course already be a similar system available that I don't
> know about :-) Any suggestions?


I don't think that sort of software is available. However this is the
sort of software that in my experience is needed.

In my mind I have the idea of a web application that is aware of apt.
You could say "I want to install package X for Ubuntu version Y". It
would then give you a list of URLs that are needed for downloading the
package and the dependencies.

The reason I suggest a web app is so you can use this on a windows
machine at a local internet café. (Believe me there are lots of internet
cafés in the developing world). You could then download all those links
to your flash drive, or burn it to a CD. The web app might even generate
a script that's run that'll install everything, just to make it even easier.

For some stuff I did for Camara to make 'Camarabuntu' (a customized
camara distro), I made some python code that basically does a lot of apt
features. This allowed me to say "Download all the dependencies for this
package in this version"

The code is here: http://repo.or.cz/w/camarabuntu.git

I think we should write up a blueprint for this sort of software, and
see if anything out there does it, or if we should create something.


Rory

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