Arch Linux

fuse

Member

From: california

Registered: 2004-04-11

Posts: 38

Get but don't install

I was wondering if it's possible to get packages with there dependencies but not install them. I will explain why I want to do this. I have 6 computers running Arch, I was thinking about having one box download packages that all other 5 computers need and syncing off that box. I was kinda thinking its just wasting bandwith downloading KDE and the like 5 times. I do realize I could do this already, but, that would mean installing every package I need on one box which I would like to avoid. I hope this makes some sense and flame me if I missed something in the docs.

dpb

Member

From: Cyperspace?

Registered: 2004-04-11

Posts: 231

Re: Get but don't install

Do you know that 'man' is? It displays a MANUAL page of a program. 8) 'man pacman' displays the MANUAL page for PACMAN. Everything is explained very clearly in it.

Now to answer your question that the MANUAL page for PACMAN could have answered quite easily without you having to type your question here in the forums, use the -w or --downloadonly Sync flag for it. That is, 'pacman -Syuw' will download only the new packages and 'pacman -Sw package' will download only a certain package.

dp

Member

From: Zürich, Switzerland

Registered: 2003-05-27

Posts: 3,378

Website

Re: Get but don't install

just an idea:
if these 6 computers are in a LAN, you can use NFS to share /var/cache/pacman/pkg (export it from one computer, and mount it at /var/cache/pacman/pkg to the others) and then the pacman on the other machines would always find the pkgs and only install them without downloading

only possible trouble: make sure, only one computer running pacman writes to this share at a time (maybe pacman needs a lock file for sometihng like that that is under /var/cache/pacman/pkg) --- however, if only one machine has rw and the others are ro, this is absolutely no problem

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The impossible missions are the only ones which succeed.