On Monday 17 November 2003 05:12, Dr. Sharukh K. R. Pavri. wrote:
Next LUG meet: 9 Nov 2003 around 4 pm - VJTI
I had installed Knoppix 3.2 on my machine. After doing apt-get update, some 60 - 70 mb worth of .debs had been downloaded and then installed on my machine.
Now, the hdd has developed bad sectors. As the hdd is still within the warranty period, I have to return it to the vendor for testing which will destroy all my data on the hdd.
Which make of hd and how old was it. I am interested as i am about to purchase a vanilla 40 or 80 GB drive.
the .debs have been saved on the hdd somewhere in /var/... (I don't remember the exact location -- I am not at that machine).
the debs are in /var/cache/apt/archives
my question is:
If I back up these .deb files, will I be able to reuse them after I reinstall knoppix ? if so, how ?
yes. mkdir /root/debs cd /root/debs cp <backed up files> dpkg -iR *.deb
or cd /root/debs dpkg-scanpackages debs /dev/null | gzip > debs/Packages.gz
then add the following to /etc/apt/sources.list deb file:/root debs/
finally apt-get update apt-get install packagename
Howto at http://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/apt-howto/ ch-basico.en.html#s-dpkg-scanpackages
the second method is the correct method. But if u r lazy like me, the first works well except throwing up a lot of errors while recursing.
What other files do I need to backup ?
Afaik nothing else.
What is the best way to get a working debian install on my machine with all the latest goodies like in knoppix ? (I mean the latest kde for eg, which in woody, even after upgrading via the net gives me kde 2.1.2 which is ancient :( )
Install knoppix. do one of the above. then apt-get update; apt-get upgrade.
Enjoy the latest-n-greatest Debian.