Arch Linux

acratus

Member

Registered: 2010-04-07

Posts: 3

Installing packages via burned CD

Hello everyone.

I have an x86 machine that I've just installed Arch onto. For reasons I won't get into, it's not going to be networked at all (no internet or intranet, therefore no pacman mirrors). I'm wanting to install packages via the CD drive: Ruby, Python, X, BSD games, Tex, etc. The idea is I will download these packages and burn them to CD, then access them via the Arch machine.

I guess my question is, what is generally the best way to go about this? I think I'd have to get pacman to point to my CD drive to search for new repositories, but I am unaware how this would be accomplished. Google searches do not yield helpful results. I suppose I could just compile them from source, but is there an easier way?

Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks
Dan

tomk

Forum Fellow

From: Ireland

Registered: 2004-07-21

Posts: 9,839

Re: Installing packages via burned CD

pacman -U /path/to/package.pkg.tar.gz is the quick'n'easy way. However, because everything gets explicitly installed, you lose some pacman -Q functionality. This or this would be better, but a bit more work would be required.

acratus

Member

Registered: 2010-04-07

Posts: 3

Re: Installing packages via burned CD

Thanks, Tomk, that was very helpful. I think I will try the first link you gave me as I'm not afraid of doing a little work. I'm going to leave the thread open for a little while to see if anyone has any other opinions, then I'll mark it as resolved.

perbh

Member

From: Republic of Texas

Registered: 2005-03-04

Posts: 765

Re: Installing packages via burned CD

mount -o ro /dev/sr0 /my/repo

Then - edit your mirrorlist:

Server = file:///my/repo/$repo

Obviously (I hope), this will be your only 'active' entry in mirrorlist.
And then -

pacman -Syu

Last edited by perbh (2010-04-07 23:05:46)

tomk

Forum Fellow

From: Ireland

Registered: 2004-07-21

Posts: 9,839

Re: Installing packages via burned CD

perbh - his CD is just a bunch of packages, not a repo. The second link in my post above fills the gap.

perbh

Member

From: Republic of Texas

Registered: 2005-03-04

Posts: 765

Re: Installing packages via burned CD

perbh - his CD is just a bunch of packages, not a repo. The second link in my post above fills the gap.

ooops *lol* - I checked your first link but not the 2nd - guess my fingers were faster (at a multitude) than my brain.

I use a portable usb-drive for my repo - and it has 'core', 'extra' and 'community' as the top directories - in which case what I wrote above would work. If your  repo is just a collection of packages, obviously it wont ... sorry for not reading properly :-(