Hey Guys

As a first time (Mandrake) Linux user, I have to say that the laterest distro of Mandrake (v10.1) has been really install friendly.

My question is in regard to the MandrakeUpdate facility that comes with the distro. After checking for updates, I find that I need to download a whopping 300MB just for security updates (well, had worse on windows machines with their service packs :P).

I was hoping that there was some way (possibly not through MandrakeUpdate? Since the function it offers doesn't include what I want to do) that I could download the updates to somewhere on my harddrive (from there I'll write it to some removable media) so that I could install it on other machines that I decide to put Mandrake on, instead of having to download 300MB each time I do a fresh install.

Thanks guys.

Yes, the mandrake_update sites are nothing more than publically accessible FTP/HTTP server.

You can merely download the entire contents of the respective directories.

Note: Have you set up your URPMI sources? (see my sig!)

If not, DO SO NOW!

Be aware that until you do you are missing a rather huge portion of Mandrake!

Once you connect to these sources and see what is available, you'll be tempted to do the same thing with them...

You can do this, but downloading PLF, CONTRIB, JPACKAGE, etc. will eat up about a whopping 20 gigs of space!

Thanks for the reply Opjose.

What I've done so far is to check that my sources are set up (via the gui version of rpmdrake: System -> Configuration -> Packaging -> Software Media Manager). Since I installed this version of Mandrake from downloaded cd's, they exist as sources there, I also noticed an "update_source" Medium, I copied the link from it and found like you said a ftp directory of the main Mandrake updates:

ftp://mirror.pacific.net.au/linux/Ma...1/main_updates

I'm thinking of copying everything there onto my hd and then copy onto cd's (800mb worth) and installing it from there. That's what you meant isn't it?

You also made mention of other updates like the PLF, CONTRIB, JPACKAGE, what are they and where should I be getting them from please (the link provided in your sig refers only to equivalent links for Mandrake 9.1)?
I guess the real question is do I really need them?

Thanks again.

Until you set up the URPMI sources, you are only viewing about 20% of the software available for Mandrake.

The link in my sig is fully applicable to Mandrake 10.1.

While the example given is for 9.1, had you followed the configuration page (which you should RUN, not WALK, to do NOW!!!!) you would have set things up for 10.1.

Contrib, PLF, JPACKAGE are all the missing software items which you need.

Each respectively is located on different mirrored FTP sites.

Set up the sources, then browse the packages via RPMdrake.

You'll be amazed at how much you are currently missing, even if you possess the commercial DVD Powerpack release... (which only includes a subset of the Contrib repository...)

Hey opjose. Sorry for the very late reply. I hadn't had time to log onto my linux box for a while now.

But did manage to set up the rpm sources using a combination of the information gleamed from the link in your signature & easy rpm.

Cheers

You could use urpmi with --noclean to just get the updates that apply to your computer - they'll be downloaded to /var/cache/urpmi/rpms:

Mirroring with fmirror is good if you want to get the whole update directory. Install fmirror then create a file somewhere (eg /home/mirrorupdates.conf) with these contents:
Then run fmirror with the following command:
You can put this in /etc/crontab to have it do it automatically: