Using urpmi

PeteHeyes · 12-04-2004, 08:03 PM

As a nOOb to Linux - 1 week in - I've found that I need to re-install quite frequently (to sort out partitions for dual boot, problems with X that I'm so far incapable of sorting out from the command line etc)

I VERY MUCH LIKE what I find so far with LINUX.

However having discovered the joys of urpmi (via this site and easyurpmi.zarb.org ) I have 2 related questions....

1. How can I recognise - and thus copy to CD - those files that have been downloaded via urpmi ?
2. How - on a subsequent reinstall - do I make urpmi aware that I have the relevant files (or most of them - given 'new' releases) to hand and thus prevent the slow process of downloading them yet again

P.S.

Mandrake 10.1 Community installed from DVD/cdrom
CD-RW drive = cdrom1
DVD/CD drive = cdrom

scuzzman · 12-04-2004, 09:07 PM

The easiest way is to not *install* them, but just download. Fidn where urpmi is downloading the files from (should be an ftp server) and connect to it using an ftp program of choice. Download teh respective programs and burn them (the *.rpm files) to a disk.

Code:

man urpmi

for deatils on listing servers.

PeteHeyes · 12-05-2004, 04:34 PM

Thanks scuzzman

I probably wasn't very clear in my original post that it was actually the hdlist.cz files that I was after rather than rpm files - it is these that take the bulk of the time to download at the moment.

Anyway I found them in /var/lib/urpmi and have copied them onto a FAT32 partition for safe keeping.... though whether of course I can manage to get them to work when the need arises isn't yet clear to me.......

Easy urpmi creates console commands such as

Code:

urpmi.addmedia main ftp://ftp.sunsite.org.uk/package/man...586/media/main with media_info/hdlist.cz

for which, in man I see

Code:

ftp:

         urpmi.addmedia  [options]  <name>  ftp://<login>:<pass>@<host>/<path>
       [with <relative path of synthesis|hdlist>]
              The same as for http, just add your login and user  if  required
              (Note  that you needn't to specify anonymous as login for anony-
              mous access ftp servers).
              Note that if wget is used to download files with a firewall  you
              may have to add passive_ftp=on option to /etc/wgetrc.
              eg:  urpmi.addmedia  ftp  ftp://a:a@leia//export/media/main with
              media_info/hdlist.cz

So I'm a little confused - can I add a local path to hdlist ? how do I define it ? what syntax should I use ? Or does the term 'relative' just mean relative within the ftp site (as it would - I think - in HTML), and that urmpi.addmedia will always download the hdlist.cz from the ftp site?

Thanks again
Pete

scuzzman · 12-05-2004, 07:47 PM

urpmi.addmedia will download the hdlist.cz because the software could've (and in fact, probably did) change since the last time your downloaded it.
It may be a bit easier to download the synthesized hdlist. these are MUCH smaller, but dont include descriptions...

PeteHeyes · 12-06-2004, 11:03 AM

OK.

I thought it might do something along those lines. I'll think about using the synthesis files in future...

Thanks