Where can I get Debian install images that work without an Internet connection?

I've been getting mine here:

https://cdimage.debian.org/debian-cd.../amd64/iso-cd/

For reasons that are not relevant right now, I've had to install Debian 9 some ten times or so, from three images obtained on three different days a few weeks apart, and the installation ALWAYS fails if I don't let it download packages from the online repository during installation, which takes a damn long time.

Where can I get CD images that work standalone, without any Internet?

So you're just installing with the xfce desktop only?

Fails how?

The thing says that the installation of packages failed. It suggests trying again, but trying again fails instantly.

From memory, it gives me the option to install "Debian desktop," "XFCE" and "system tools." I eventually tried it without the system tools and it finally installed. I hadn't tried that yet.

Yeah, CD's aren't as big as they used to be - the DVD's are probaby what you need for a full offline install.

use the first of 3 dvd's

https://cdimage.debian.org/debian-cd...amd64/iso-dvd/

https://cdimage.debian.org/debian-cd...md64-DVD-1.iso

1 members found this post helpful.

The easy way, and I've done this, is to bring your hard drive (or SD card) to a connected similar machine and install onto it, then bring it home and plug it in. Install Synaptic while you're at it because you can select things in it you want to install (and it gets all the dependencies right) then export that list to a script that uses wget to fetch the files. Copy that to a USB device, bring it to the internet, run it, bring the files home and Synaptic will load them, works very well. See the File menu in it.

The full set of install disks is sort of pointless because it's stuff you'll never use before it's obsolete. Just get the install CD,which should also work on USB media. With 128 GB and up SDs disks are becoming antique.

If you have an x86 machine you can't install on a arm machine, but other than that the 2 machines don't need to be that similar. It's not like Windows where they go out of their way to trip you up.

I have succesfully installed Debian without an internet connection - many times.
the XFCE iso should be fine, but others are available. Bit hard to find, debian.org is a labyrinth.

Yeah, actually Rasbian and most of the ARM images I've used: Rock64, Odroid N2, Pinebook Pro, Raspberry Pi 64 bit Debian are like that too. It's not so much an interactive install as just dumping one big binary image onto the media, then the partition resizes to fill the available space after the first boot. I think I've read that you could just dd something like a livecd image (ISO) onto a hard drive and boot it. Then maximize the partition with something like Gparted. I know you can DD an ISO file to a USB stick (or SD card in a reader) and boot from it, I did it once by accident.

Not much internet here, dialup for years and lately a cell phone. Playing with EasyTether because first AT&T then T-Mobile blocked me with the wifi hotspot. Off-peak hours aren't too bad lately, but I've probably reinstalled both the Android and Linux sides 10 times. Real internet (fiber) is at least a year away, been hearing about it for 10 years.

Sure that would work.
But that's not the same as installing it. You would have a Debian Live Medium, on your hard drive.

Yes, but it's bootstrapped and runs. Then you start the sneakernet process of getting aptitude or synaptic in place and doing updates and adding more stuff. Aptitude doesn't seem to let you tag a bunch of files and output a download script like Synaptic.

There's almost no such thing as a static Debian, it always wants to update. apt-get update on dialup used to take me 20-30 minutes, I didn't do it often. You fix old bugs and add new ones.

OpenBSD comes out with 2 versions a year, much simpler. About 60% of the programs are unchanged from version to version, it's worth keeping your old distfiles around. There are patches for security problems, but those are patches to the source so they're tiny. It's an advantage of building everything yourself from source because you just patch and recompile.

None of this makes any sense to me.

This is wrong.
The user wants to update, not Debian.
It is actually one of Debian's goals to make a stable system that Just Works. Partial upgrades (meaning: you only upgrade what you want) are supported (even explicitely IIRC).

Don't get me wrong, I understand your desire to have a system that works without an internet connection. It's perfectly possible and Debian is an ideal candidate for that.

I haven't really installed with no internet in mind, at least since about 2005. My first time I downloaded and burned the full set of DVD images and took them home. Then I got caught up in doing apt-get update, which isn't really required. As somebody once put it, you don't ever have to update. Something I installed lately, a couple things I think, did updates and maybe upgrades as part of the install. Not installing a deb, this was something from outside the debs.

I mean the installation is bootstrapped so it will run without the install media. Maybe it's a different kernel version, and everybody has their own favorite sets of programs. So usually you do an apt-get update to populate the list of debs. You can download individual debs you want, try to install and go back with a list of dependencies, get those files and find out what the dependencies of those are, I think I've seen it take 4 or 5 tries. I think the updates and upgrades will take a livecd version to being the same as an installer-installed version. I think I've seen a livecd that offers to install. If you were going somewhere with no internet at all, a full set of DVDs should about cover what you need. When I had a full set I copied them all to my hard drive rather than constantly changing disks, set the directories up in my sources.list I think.

But in the ARM world for whatever reason everything's done from images you write to an SD card, there aren't any installers. Then again, maybe there just aren't installers yet, only images by people like Ayufan and Armbian. My Pinebook Pro has a Bullseye Debian that was installed by Debootstrap. A few things aren't quite right yet, it's only been a week or so. Drivers are a major issue, especially Mali drivers. ARM expects everybody to jump to using Wayland so they stopped writing x11 drivers.

^ all that is just a rant with no palpable value, faulty half-knowledge, and going increasingly OT.
And you're not even OP, I think I missed that earlier.

I'm out.