Installing Software While Offline
 

I have a computer at home, with no internet connection.

I'd like to install some flavor of Debian on it (Knoppix perhaps). The problem is, that I would later like to add packages to the system and extend its functionality (i.e, install new software), kind of like what one does with every computer.

But I don't have any internet connection. I would have to burn the software on CDs and bring it home, and install it via apt from the CD itself.

Problem is: Will this create a dependency hell? How will I know what packages to burn on the CD whenever I want to install a new program?

I'm not 'fixed' on a specific distro. I just want something that will let me install new software with no internet connection.

Help?

Thank you.

every distro let you do it. If you don't want to go into dependency hell download dependies too. If the laptop or other pc you are using is running debian too, it will be apt-get plus options to download only and this will resolve any dependencies. For rpm nightmare, i don't know(mandrake,etc...)

Besides checking the package itself with apt, the Debian site contains that information.
For instance.
Also there are a few steps that need to be taken to create a directory that apt-get will work with locally. Check Google.
Good Luck.

You can download the raw debs, and install with dpkg.... Make sure you resolve dependencies. Its possibel (Well... nearly impossible, but not to let you down) to install cygwin on you other box (Making the assumption it is win32... othewise this gets alot easier). from there you can download apt source, install it, then use apt to fetch the debs. It could be quite painful, but also could be quite educational.

See section 2.2 How to use APT locally:
http://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/ap...basico.en.html

Thanks to all of you for your replies. However, there's on thing I don't get. Suppose I want to download application X. However, it depends on package Y. I then see this easily and download package Y. But what if package Y depends on package Z? How do I see this?

i guess a man apt would not hurt if you are downloading from a debian based system. If it is a win32 os, i do not know how you could do it...

Yup, it's Win32 (WinXP Pro). That's what I have at work.

If I could only solve this, I could use Knoppix at home (HD install). ...

i would suggest downloading debian isos(all of them : stable or sarge) if you are not too afraid by a pure debian installation. It contains most of the package you will need. For other software like openoffice you can use the zip or bin binaries instead of packages, burn them and it is easy to setup also.

Do you know of any solution that's in the works which would let me do what I want?

The problem is that binaries are 'unclean', in that I cannot easily remove them later.

You might want to give apt-zip a try. It can create a script containing the packages that need to be installed.

I have the same problem, except one more restriction ... i can't install any software on the remote computer (it's at school and we're not allowed to _touch_ anything beyond what's already on there). I've read the whole dhelp page for apt-zip but i cant figure out how to retrieve the list of packages to download from in the first place

Another solution ive thought of is using a batch file _on_ the drive and tar and ar and gz (i think there are ported versions ) also on the drive to examine the control file of the downloaded package and automattically download all dependencies. It would be really complex and alot of effort though