Hello all. I keep all the archives from installed programs on one computer, and use smbmount to mount that folder as /var/cache/apt on other computers to reduce/eliminate download time. But I still have to run apt-get update on each computer. Is it possible to eliminate this step as well, in case I want to update a computer that is not connected to the Internet (or, perhaps, and neighbor's computer which has only dial-up where even an apt-get update can be a lengthy process)?

Thanks

Sorry, I guess I don't exactly understand what you're trying to do... You can try to make your apt cache into a repository on CD/DVD.

When I had dialup (unlimited access per month), I set a cronjob to run a script that would 1) dialup and login, 2) run aptitude update && aptitude -dy upgrade (download only and assume yes), and 3) hangup after 6 hours.

I would run it every week and then check my mail log. If the mail log had an error that it lost connection, I knew it didn't finish in the first 6 hours and would schedule it again for that night. When everything is downloaded, you can just run aptitude upgrade and it'll install from the hard drive.

If you run stable branch, then updates could easily finish in a couple hours a week (just security updates). I did my first dist-upgrade this way too. I think it took 7 days to download the new system...

Specifically what I would like to do is copy all my archives off of my computer on to CD, and use that CD to upgrade my neighbor's computer which is also running Debian (but he wants to install some new software and I figure I should do a dist-upgrade first since his is an old Kanotix install). He only has dial-up. I guess I can still do an apt-get update with their dial-up connection, but I was hoping there was another way.