Ways to keep my Debian box updated over dial-up (3 KB/sec)?

Discussion:

(too old to reply)

A***@zimage.com

2005-02-02 22:24:44 UTC

Hello!

I no longer have broadband connection nor can get broadband at home for
my Internet usage. I am forced to use dial-up with EarthLink that only
goes at 3 KB/sec due to poor Verizon's phone systems. Back in Autumn of
2004, I installed Debian v3.1 with its Sarge installer. Net installation
was so fun and easy over cable modem connection. Not any more on dial-up.
:(

I noticed apt-get update takes forever to download (30+ minutes). Just
for kicks, I saw many MB to download for apt-get upgrade. It was about
250 MB would be 25 hours nonstop (woah). EarthLink doesn't let me stay
online more than 24 hours straight per connection session. Also, my
connection isn't that stable. I am trying to find ways to optimize this
to make my installation and updates efficient.

I do have broadband access, CD burners, and USB Flash drives/sticks (256-
512 MB) at work. Is there a way to get all these Debian packages and
upgrades quickly? I do not and cannot run Debian at work due to heavy
firewall restrictions (apt-get update and upgrade doesn't work well in
VMware v4.5.x tests).

Bascially, I would like to take the list of packages that I need to
download and their locations, download them at work to burn to a CD-RW
and/or USB Flash drives/sticks (haven't tested to see if Flash
drives/sticks work on that Debian box). I see *.dep files are download-
able from http://www.debian.org/distrib/packages (unstable, stable,
etc.). I do NOT want have to download each file one by one. I think
there was about a hundred packages in apt-get upgrade list when I
checked last night. Gah! :(

It looks like Debian wasn't really designed for dial-up modems and I do
not really want to get another distribution. Please note that this is a
desktop workstation, not a notebook/laptop so portability is not an
option.

Thank you in advance for any suggestions. :)

--
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A***@zimage.com

2005-02-03 22:46:28 UTC

Permalink

Someone told me to look at apt-zip and apt-move commands, but he/she
didn't know how to use them (just read about them). I downloaded those
two packages and ran them. I looked at their help with "man" command, but
I am still puzzled on how to use them for my dial-up issue.

What am I supposed to do with them? I assume I want to use apt-zip:
"These scripts simplify the process of using dselect and apt on a non-
networked Debian box, using removable media like ZIP floppies. One
generates a `fetch' script (supporting backends such as wget and lftp, in
a modular, extensible way) to be run on a host with better connectivity,
check space constraints of your removable media, and then install the
package on your Debian box."

I am at a loss on how to start this. I assume it is like run these scripts
on my Debian box after doing apt-get update (30+ minutes), copy the list
of locations to download, go to a Windows box with broadband connection
like at work, run the wget to download all the packages, burn them to CD
or copy to USB Flash drives/sticks, then run apt-get upgrade from the CD
or USB Flash drives/sticks. Is that how it supposed to work?

Sorry if I sound like a newbie/novice which I am. ;) Thank you in advance.

Post by A***@zimage.com
Hello!
I no longer have broadband connection nor can get broadband at home for
my Internet usage. I am forced to use dial-up with EarthLink that only
goes at 3 KB/sec due to poor Verizon's phone systems. Back in Autumn of
2004, I installed Debian v3.1 with its Sarge installer. Net installation
was so fun and easy over cable modem connection. Not any more on dial-up.
:(
I noticed apt-get update takes forever to download (30+ minutes). Just
for kicks, I saw many MB to download for apt-get upgrade. It was about
250 MB would be 25 hours nonstop (woah). EarthLink doesn't let me stay
online more than 24 hours straight per connection session. Also, my
connection isn't that stable. I am trying to find ways to optimize this
to make my installation and updates efficient.
I do have broadband access, CD burners, and USB Flash drives/sticks (256-
512 MB) at work. Is there a way to get all these Debian packages and
upgrades quickly? I do not and cannot run Debian at work due to heavy
firewall restrictions (apt-get update and upgrade doesn't work well in
VMware v4.5.x tests).
Bascially, I would like to take the list of packages that I need to
download and their locations, download them at work to burn to a CD-RW
and/or USB Flash drives/sticks (haven't tested to see if Flash
drives/sticks work on that Debian box). I see *.dep files are download-
able from http://www.debian.org/distrib/packages (unstable, stable,
etc.). I do NOT want have to download each file one by one. I think
there was about a hundred packages in apt-get upgrade list when I
checked last night. Gah! :(
It looks like Debian wasn't really designed for dial-up modems and I do
not really want to get another distribution. Please note that this is a
desktop workstation, not a notebook/laptop so portability is not an
option.
Thank you in advance for any suggestions. :)

E. Charters

2005-02-04 01:45:28 UTC

Permalink

You just encapulated in a golden nutshell why millions of people do not
run Debian. Not to be snide, but the real answer to your question is:
who cares?! (I almost threw a debian server box through a window that
hung me up ona software upgrade with its apt-get and select nonsense.

Like downloading a tar-gz file and gunzipping, detarring and making it
or using pkgtool is a fog of difficulty. Compared to apt-get's hurricane
of opaqueness, slack is a gentle zephyr from the oasis of clarity.

Apt-get sort of speciously makes you believe that Debian is upgradeable.
In practice that is not true. It won't work. It's a come-on.

EC<:-}

# use them as an excuse to use a different distribution. Slackware?

Post by A***@zimage.com
"These scripts simplify the process of using dselect and apt on a non-
networked Debian box, using removable media like ZIP floppies. One
generates a `fetch' script (supporting backends such as wget and lftp, in
a modular, extensible way) to be run on a host with better connectivity,
check space constraints of your removable media, and then install the
package on your Debian box."

# a snap. Let me know when you graduate, and if you got that done by then.

# actually it would work. A bash script to automate wget or an expect
script would download a list. It is not that truly hard to do that in
perl either. If you can write the simple open and load script it might
work in background. Connect scripts need a bit of testing as the state
of the download program needs to be known.

Post by A***@zimage.com
I am at a loss on how to start this. I assume it is like run these scripts
on my Debian box after doing apt-get update (30+ minutes), copy the list
of locations to download, go to a Windows box with broadband connection
like at work, run the wget to download all the packages, burn them to CD
or copy to USB Flash drives/sticks, then run apt-get upgrade from the CD
or USB Flash drives/sticks. Is that how it supposed to work?

# you could do that. It might work.

# actually it is supposed to work directly over the net after a debian
boot. But it will hang on software it does not want to install, for
reasons that are too mysterious to describe.

Post by A***@zimage.com
Sorry if I sound like a newbie/novice which I am. ;) Thank you in advance.

Try red hat. Try slackware. There is no law against self abuse, but it
feels soooo good when you quit.

EC<:-}

Post by A***@zimage.com

Post by A***@zimage.com
Hello!
I noticed apt-get update takes forever to download (30+ minutes). Just
for kicks, I saw many MB to download for apt-get upgrade. It was about
250 MB would be 25 hours nonstop (woah).

# right. so use the neighbour's broadband,

Dale Henderson

2005-02-08 02:46:07 UTC

Permalink

Post by A***@zimage.com
Someone told me to look at apt-zip and apt-move commands, but he/she
didn't know how to use them (just read about them). I downloaded those
two packages and ran them. I looked at their help with "man" command, but
I am still puzzled on how to use them for my dial-up issue.
"These scripts simplify the process of using dselect and apt on a non-
networked Debian box, using removable media like ZIP floppies. One
generates a `fetch' script (supporting backends such as wget and lftp, in
a modular, extensible way) to be run on a host with better connectivity,
check space constraints of your removable media, and then install the
package on your Debian box."
I am at a loss on how to start this. I assume it is like run these scripts
on my Debian box after doing apt-get update (30+ minutes), copy the list
of locations to download, go to a Windows box with broadband connection
like at work, run the wget to download all the packages, burn them to CD
or copy to USB Flash drives/sticks, then run apt-get upgrade from the CD
or USB Flash drives/sticks. Is that how it supposed to work?

on the debian box run apt-get update (Wait...). Then run
apt-zip-list -m /flash -a dist-upgrade

where /flash is the mount point for your flash drive

take the drive to work plug it into the windows box and run the
generated fetch-script-wget-$HOST script from the flash drive. This
is the hard part. You'll probably have to install cygwin on the
windows box.

Once youve downloaded the files plug the flash drive into the debian
box and type

apt-zip-inst -m /flash

and this should do it

(note you can modify MEDIUM in /etc/apt/apt-zip.conf to avoid having
to type the -m option all the time)

Morningdew

2005-02-08 21:00:53 UTC

Permalink

There are few things out there, but you'll have to look into them on
your own. Apt-proxy is good for, like, a group of machines (one
downloads from net, others get it from the 'master'). See
http://apt-proxy.sourceforge.net for more. Another couple things to
look into are apt-cacher, which seems to do something similar, and
apt-move which could be helpful too. Another thing for you might be
netselect-apt, which builds a sources.list of the fastest mirrors for
you. None of these have I tried or looked into too deeply, but they
have come by my eyes in the past week. Talked to a teacher about
setting up the apt-proxy to maintain lab systems more network-efficiently.

I would bet that there is a way to make a "mirror" of only what your
system presently has installed on a set of CDs, and then take that to
the broadband locale and maintain keeping that mirror updated. If you
have some hard drive space, you may even manage to keep two "mirrors"
synced by taking only the diffs home on CD when need be. It may be a
little work to set up but with some creativity and a little "light"
reading on the APT system, I would not be surprised if there is a way.

Good luck, and - as always - report back any successes and/or methods
for others to benefit. Also, you may want to haunt some #Debian on
freenode or other channels on IRC and see if you can snag an apt guru
for some q & a.

Peace,
Morningdew

Rick Moen

2005-03-02 01:31:47 UTC

Permalink

Post by A***@zimage.com
Someone told me to look at apt-zip and apt-move commands, but he/she
didn't know how to use them (just read about them). [...]

Wow, and if you'd have picked _one_ newsgroup rather than FSCKING SEVEN
OF THEM, MANY OF THEM COMPLETELY INAPPROPRIATE, people might have
actually helped you with this and your other questions.