Arch Linux

kpedersen

Member

Registered: 2010-07-04

Posts: 6

Trouble getting offline workstation up and running

Hello All,

I am pretty new around here, I am a FreeBSD user but require a good Linux distribution for a few projects I am working on. Since Arch is probably the closest to the *BSDs I thought it would be the best choice

As the title suggests, my workstations remain offline and I am running into a little trouble with the packaging system...

Problem 1

I installed the packages from base and base-devel when I installed Arch, however now I would like to remount the packages directory on the cdrom and install a few packages that did not get installed. The difficulty arises when the packages are not in a directory on the disk, but instead in a sqashfs image? Is there a way to mount this?

Problem 2

Like FreeBSD xorg is not part of the base, however it is also not on the CD either... What would be the best way to get it installed without making hundreds of trips to an online workstation with a thumbstick to work out and download all the dependencies?

Problem 3

The ABS system (similar to ports apparently) does not seem to be on the cdrom, where would I get hold of a snapshot that 100% matches the packages given on the CD, I cannot be tied down to an online server to update all my packages.

Any information would be greatly appreciated.

So far I do like its cleanness, and its installer was really good!

Best Regards,

Karsten

ndowens

Member

Registered: 2007-08-15

Posts: 39

Website

Re: Trouble getting offline workstation up and running

The best thing you can do is to hook the machine up to the internet and install that way, because the cd isn't going to contain many things you want. On the ABS question, you need the internet because when you try to install from ABS it is going to try and download the software from the internet.

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tkdfighter

Member

From: Switzerland

Registered: 2009-01-28

Posts: 126

Re: Trouble getting offline workstation up and running

As ndowens stated, the easiest way would be to connect your workstation to the internet. If that's not possible for whatever reason, you could get a list of dependencies by executing "pacman -Su package-name" and before hitting yes, put all the required packages into /var/cache/pacman/pkg. As for ABS, I think it's possible to do something similar, but you best read it up here: http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/ABS

faytaliti

Member

From: Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India

Registered: 2009-03-29

Posts: 13

Re: Trouble getting offline workstation up and running

I would personally suggest that you fire up a thumbdrive-friendly linux distro, connnect to the internet and then "chroot" into the your Arch system.
This way, you would have the flexible connection to the internet, a GUI, and you get your work done reasonably fast rather than downloading the entire ABS cache. Follow the link and read up just in case: http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Chroot

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