Hi, I'm reposting this message with a few clarifications in the hope that someone will answer my questions.
I was recently lent an old 486 PC by a friend so that I could do some Web server development. The machine is not mine and not readily upgradable so I HAVE to work with what I have. First limitation is that the machine only has ~360Mb of hard disk space, limitation number 2 is that the machine has an old CDROM drive with an ISA based proprietary controller card. This card is NOT supported by Linux, though I have a DOS boot disc with the nescessary drivers for DOS. I also have Cheapbytes version of the Debian 2.0 CD. OK. Now I cann't load Debian directly off of the CD because the CDROM drive is not supported. So I got base installed on the machine by creating a 30MB Dos partition and copying the basic installation files on to it from DOS. Install went OK up to the point where I need to install packages, then the lack of the CD (and space on the HD for temporary storage) became a problem. I need parts of about 8 or 9 packages some of which will involve loading up to 80MB at a time in temporary storage if I can't use the CD as source. 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? If not how do you deal with loading packages from paths different from those in the package file? 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 also have a laptop PC with a working CDROM (running win95) on which I've installed an FTPD for win95. Question 4 --- when I try to use this machine as an FTP source, Dselect seems to expect a specific layout dist/stable/main et al 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 the paths to the files listed as dist/stable/main etc. However, 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
