Hi all, I have a number of small problems getting Debian packages onto my PC. Ok, for a start the machine has an unrecognised CDROM type and second it has a limited HD size (~360Mb). I can't do anything about either of these problems at the moment and would like some advice for working around my problems.
I managed to install by leaving a small 30MB dos partition on the machine and copying the base distribution and install files into it via DOS. This allowed me to get the basic system loaded. My problem is how to load the rest of the packages. I have a couple of ideas and would like to know the answers to a few specific questions. 1) Idea 1 I could copy a few packages at a time onto the 30Mb Dos drive and install from there. Question 1 --- To run dselect do I only need the .deb files or do I need the "packages" files too? Question 2 --- If I do need the "packages" file do I have to edit it to reflect the actual path to the .deb files? Question 3 --- What constitutes a package? I have several directories called things like "net" do I copy the whole directory or just the .deb files I seem to need? Idea 2 I have a PC with a working CDROM (running win95) I also have a FTPD for win95. Qustion 4 --- when I try to use this machine as an FTP source Dselect seems to expect a specific layout dist/stable/main and the like Unfortunately my CD has the form d:/debian/hamm/hamm... How can I change this so that Dselect can read fron the remote drive? Question 5 --- the "packages" file has files listed in the dist/stable/main way were as the layout of my CD is D:/debian/hamm/hamm/binary-i386/... would I need a new packages file with the paths corrected? Question 6 --- is it possible to use a "packages" file in a different path from where the .deb files are stored? Hope that you can send me some answers... I've been pulling my hair out over this all week. Thanks Fletch I have another machine