[SOLVED] slackpkg now wants to download all packages before installing any of them!

leeeoooooo · 08-25-2015, 05:24 AM

I've been away from Slackware since shortly after 14.1 came out.
I decided to upgrade to 'current' to see what's new since then.

But slackpkg now wants to download *all* the packages before it upgrades *any* of them. Seems to me it used to download and upgrade packages one at a time.

I don't have space on my little Eee PC for all those packages!
Is there a way to change this behavior?

phenixia2003 · 08-25-2015, 05:26 AM

Hello,

In /etc/slackpkg/slackpkg.conf, set DOWNLOAD_ALL to off.

you can also run slackpkg as below :

Code:

$ slackpkg -download_all=off ...

--
SeB

Richard Cranium · 08-25-2015, 06:23 AM

Beware that slackpkg can download and install a package that breaks your ability to connect to the internet, due to a shared library change. (I've had it happen to me.) The safest option is to download them all first.

It's your machine and it sounds like you can't do it the safest way. Just have a backup plan to get the rest of the package upgrades in case something like that happens to you.

a4z · 08-25-2015, 06:49 AM

it is not very funny if you do not download all packages and after upgrade some lose the network connection

bormant · 08-25-2015, 08:18 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by leeeoooooo

I don't have space on my little Eee PC for all those packages!

May be an USB stick will be a good choice to download packages to.

colorpurple21859 · 08-25-2015, 09:07 AM

Quote:

Beware that slackpkg can download and install a package that breaks your ability to connect to the internet, due to a shared library change. (I've had it happen to me.) The safest option is to download them all first.

I had that happen to me also. Luckily I Duel boot and was able to download the rest of the packages from the other distro.

GazL · 08-25-2015, 09:18 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by bormant

May be an USB stick will be a good choice to download packages to.

Agree, though if you're going to do that, you might be better off using rsync to maintain a full mirror on it, and point slackpkg at that mirror, rather than have slackpkg pull the stuff down itself. 8GB stick's aren't expensive these days.

hitest · 08-25-2015, 09:20 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Richard Cranium

Beware that slackpkg can download and install a package that breaks your ability to connect to the internet, due to a shared library change. (I've had it happen to me.) The safest option is to download them all first.

Indeed. The slackpkg utility was quite recently set to download all packages first before installing them for that exact reason. I've also lost networking before. This is a default safety feature, not a bug.

leeeoooooo · 08-25-2015, 06:52 PM

Thank you all for the great advice!

phenixia2003, that's exactly what I was looking for, but yes, I've personally run across that situation where a partially updated system suddenly becomes unusable.

I've decided I'm going to download all of the 'current' packages to a USB flash drive and run 'setup' pointing it at the USB drive for the packages to install.

I'll save slackpkg for more incremental updates.

leeeoooooo · 08-26-2015, 06:45 AM

Better idea.

I'm going to update the TEMP variable in slackpkg.conf from /var/queue/packages to /mnt/memory (where I've mounted my 32G flash drive).

This seems to be the more conventional way to do this, and it's something I can continue to use for the foreseeable future without having to download all the packages myself ahead of time.