Creating an offline archive

[rainbowsally]

No internet? No problem...

I'm a newbie myself, so there may well be several errors in this that may be corrected in time. I think the 'observations' below are valid, however, because I'm a newbie. You are only a virgin once and we tend to forget stuff after we get comfortable working around certain problems.

WARNING: EXPERIMENTAL.

The riskiest part here is uninstalling. Don't uninstall ANYTHING unless you have a basic understanding of dpkg or some other way to restore a seriously damaged system.

There appear to be some bugs in the linkage in the DVD packages that can uninstall kubuntu desktop and even xorg for unfathomable reasons.

That said, this is a work in progress. And I've had some success, which I hadn't had before, so I assume it's due to the changes I made to my previous setup.

But I could be wrong.

Anyway, here's the experiment and a few incidental observations as a result of this process.

Using the DVD as an offline deb package archive:

Not sure it was necessary but I created and populated the binary-i386
directory with the Packages files shown. I actually downloaded those bz2 and gz files.

It didn't seem to work before and does seem to work now. That's all I can say at present.

        url
    ________|________
   dists       pool
  ____|___     ____|___
 precise ...      ... main
  __|___           __|____
 main ...            ... a ...
 __|________          ____|___,______
binary-i386 ...         ... aisleriot ...
   |                  |
[Packages.bz2 Packages.gz Release]   [versions]

I added the tree above to my filesystem and updated my /etc/apt/sources.list to include it. And it works! :-) At least it seems to. The branch on the right is a copy of the dirs on the DVD and the branch on the left was generated from what I saw at a debian download page.

And here's what I have discovered by way of experiments after having setting this up. (Using version 12.4 DVD, no internet connection.)

1. Muon is dangerous.
[x] uninstalling kdevelop4 should not require uninstalling kubuntu desktop or xorg (!)

[x] Kdevelop4 is a mutant Frankenstein/Godzilla cross that wastes resources at an unimaginable rate -- 50 Megs for each and every "Hello World" app, for starters. (There's more wrong with it, but that's a biggie.)

[x] Kdevelop3, on the other hand, while it doesn't create plasmoids, is the best generic IDE/Programming editor in the Linux world. (More on kdev3 below)

Bottom line: Uninstalling kdevelop4 should not uninstall your desktop and xorg.

I think the dependencies and depends-on relationships have been reversed.

Looks like Idle might have the same prob but I haven't verified that yet.

POSSIBLE FEATURE REQUEST: There is currently no way to override this error in muon, and with many unfamiliar package names, the likelihood of newbie's being able to restore the broken system (including muon itself) is slim unless you know how to use dpkg or have other tools to work around this bug.

Know what these do?

'dpkg -i -R $MAIN/xorg' and
'dpkg -i -R $MAIN/k/kubuntu-meta/kubuntu-desktop_1.243_i386.deb'

Where $MAIN is the path to the pool subdirectory named 'main' seems to have worked to get going again.

[Verifying through a reboot... <ok> but again, I'm not sure because I've only done this once so far.]

Also:

2. qt assistant (the qt doc viewer) should either be unbundled from
[x]main/q/qt4-x11/qt4-dev-tools_4.7.4-1ubuntu6_i386.deb

or this should be added as a dependency
[x]qt4-doc_4.7.4-1ubuntu6_all.deb

As-is, assistant runs but doesn't show anything.

Note: when we attempt to get 'assistant' using apt-get (yes! it works with this setup) it offers kdevelop3 as a separate package but kdevelop4 is unfortunately bundled.

We don't have kdevelop3 on the DVD, but it's well worth the download if you want a dyn-o-mite ide/programming editor for general purposes, with a somewhat kate-like editor a regex find/replace helper (not VI/VIM), and lots more.

[Snowhog]

Re: Creating an offline archive

1. Muon is dangerous.
[x] uninstalling kdevelop4 should not require uninstalling kubuntu desktop or xorg (!)

[x] Kdevelop4 is a mutant Frankenstein/Godzilla cross that wastes resources at an unimaginable rate -- 50 Megs for each and every "Hello World" app, for starters. (There's more wrong with it, but that's a biggie.)

[x] Kdevelop3, on the other hand, while it doesn't create plasmoids, is the best generic IDE/Programming editor in the Linux world. (More on kdev3 below)

Bottom line: Uninstalling kdevelop4 should not uninstall your desktop and xorg.

You need to be careful in your blanket comments of condemnation of any application. Muon is not dangerous. It in and of itself does not define or control the dependencies of any package within the repositories - that is the responsibility of the packager of the package - and Muon, as other package managers do, simply obeys those dependencies. Muon is a graphical front-end to the underlying package manger utility. Try uninstalling kdevelop4 from the console with apt-get and see the same results.

[SteveRiley]

Re: Creating an offline archive

I cannot understand why you seem so eager to recreate work that's already been done for you. It appears that you're constructing your own package location hierarchy, and then relying on the installation of kdevelop (there's no package called kdevelop4 that I can find) to pull in most of the operating system. That means all the packages will be marked "automatic"; if you purge kdevelop, then all of its dependencies are in danger of also being removed.

We're all in favor of folks experimenting and learning -- hell, I've had such a blast the last couple years. We're also in favor of folks documenting what they learn so that others can benefit from that. So we welcome your contributions, but would you please be crisp and clear about (1) what it is that you're trying to learn and (2) what benefits the community can derive from it?

[OneLine]

Re: Creating an offline archive

HOWTO find Kubuntu's manual / reference / guide / documentation / help : http://kubuntuforums.net/forums/inde...opic=3104843.0

Ubuntu Community Documents: https://help.ubuntu.com/community
--> Personal / Local repository: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Repositories/Personal

Kubuntu Forums - Making Local Repository: http://kubuntuforums.net/forums/inde...opic=3087550.0

[claydoh]

Re: Creating an offline archive

To add to SteveRiley's comments"

Do file bug reports on kdevelop if this is from an official package or ppa, as well as perhaps split your topics up for different subjects, ie one for the offline archive, another to discuss Muon (there are already topics on this), and one about kdevelop wanting to break things for you

I am seeing why you have had such a positive experience over at OpenSuse's forum. I do heartily suggest trying the existing methods first before recreating things. It doesn't mean you are wrong or anything, just get a feel for how it is set up before you fix it .

[rainbowsally]

Re: Creating an offline archive

Hi claydoh and all.

To add to SteveRiley's comments"

Do file bug reports on kdevelop if this is from an official package or ppa, as well as perhaps split your topics up for different subjects, ie one for the offline archive, another to discuss Muon (there are already topics on this), and one about kdevelop wanting to break things for you

I am seeing why you have had such a positive experience over at OpenSuse's forum. I do heartily suggest trying the existing methods first before recreating things. It doesn't mean you are wrong or anything, just get a feel for how it is set up before you fix it .

I may (report it). But I'd better find out what the exact problem is first.

Steve, unfortunately my modem driver is Windows but I have a new utility that can look up the 'kdevelop4' info in less than a second once I bet back to a real operating system. ;-) If I remember, I'll do it... just for fun.

Regarding the rest of the comments here. The real question is "why not" recreate what has already been created?

When I started out I had none of the tools I'm used to. Hard to "recreate" much when you don't have any tools, so I fell back on the notion of expanding bash functionality with a simple set of subroutines that can be loaded with the command 'source'.

The functionality of these subfunctions is very conducive to transforming to a GUI.

I don't know about you guys but with the default set of utilities on the DVD, like qapt (which I like but I think is very incomplete), I get stuff like
1. install it
or
2. has failed dependencies

Apparently even if those dependencies ARE in the DVD archives.

But let's just chalk this all up to "experimentation" which is what this particular forum is about.

When I get the REAL tools together I'll probably have to post them elsewhere (because they are likely to be rather large).

In the meantime the principles can be demonstrated incrementally, like the evolution of computer science itself, in fast-forward.

That is, if anyone is interested. :-)

Got another one for today. Maybe it's useful to others, maybe not. But it has already been useful to me and there are a few things in it that might be inspirational for folks new to linux, or who want to add some stuff to their snippets files.

I apologize for the muon comment. But indeed I did have to reinstall a LOT of stuff to keep from killing my system.

This could only be done with the libs already loaded in memory because if I had rebooted and they were no longer in the filesystem I'd probably have had to reinstall from the DVD (which allows saving previous setups but may have a quirk in regard to the /var folder). But reinstalling the individual packages worked.

And WHEW! That was close. And thus the possible 'overstatement' regarding muon or misunderstanding of the actual source of the deletions which you CANNOT override (which I think is a missing feature), regardless of which app or package was to blame.

Thanks for the replies. :-)