[Ubuntu-BD] Potential Analysis: Custom Offline Repo

[Shabab Mustafa]

Hello Folks,

Hope all are you doing well.

For past few months people have been asking me frequently about offline repo
availability. As we have discussed about the constraints of an offline repo
earlier in this mailing list, continuous request from different people made
me give it a re-think. I will try to present my insights and findings as
concise as possible.

Q. What is an Offline Repo / Repository? (For whom may not know what it is.)

A. Offline Repository is a the collection of whole Ubuntu Repository of a
certain release, collected at a certain time. Usually comes with a set of
DVDs.


Before go any further lets peep in some findings.

Upside of an Offline Repository:
----------------------------------------------

1. When internet is not available, or very slow, people will be able to
install softwares from offline repository comes in DVDs.
2. It will be portable.
3. Is easily distributable in remote areas.
4. Cheaper than Bandwidth (on volume base).
5. A repo of Ubuntu can be used all the distros what uses Ubuntu repo (i.e.
Kubuntu, Xubuntu, Lubuntu, Mint, u-lite etc)


Downside of an Offline Repository:
-------------------------------------------------

1. Volume is too large. (Current Lucid repo is about 33 GB, comes with 8
DVDs.)

2. Get outdated very quickly.

    Packages in repo changes very frequently. What was unstable and buggy
yesterday,
    may be today there is a fix available and we can update that from online
repo with
    update manager. In case of Offline repo, what we are downloading
download today,
    tomorrow it will be 1 day old.

3. Huge amount of wastage.

    In 99.5% of cases (under current situation in Bangladesh) we do not need
more than
    1 to 1.5 GB approx. And more than 70% cases among this 99.5% It doesn't
exceeds
    more than 200 MB. So, the least amonut of wastage is 31.5 GB out of 33GB
approx.

4. Distribution Cost of the Repo is greater than the OS itself. ( 8 DVDs vs
1 CD)
5. Validity time of a Repo concerned with release times (currently 6
months).
6. In offices and labs and other places it is not guaranteed that every PC
will have its own optical drive.


Alternatives of Offline repo in Optical media:
----------------------------------------------------------------

1. Online repo,

   Which is out of range of this discussion.

2. Hard drive local mirrors.

   More suitable for Labs and workstations connected under a common server.
But can be
   done with single users. (Desktops and Laptops) But distribution of this
kind of repo is a
   major problem.

3. Customized Distros with additional packages

    Though the softwares get installed very easily by default, Customized
Distros have limitations.
    Major limitation is lots of unwanted softwares. As it comes with a bunch
of software, it needs
    more disk spaces and sometime requires more resources. And one may not
need / want all of the
    softwares added in to that. Another problem is, (I am not sure about
this) one can easily remove
    any software installed by default at any time but cannot reinstall it
without Internet if s/he needs
    at a later time.


Well, as we see, we don't need all 33 GB but we can use some 2-3 GB of
those, another option comes;
Customized offline repo contains softwares which has high and medium
frequency of usages.

=============

Technical constraints of an offline repo (both full and customized):
---------------------------------------------------------

Though the idea of customized DVD sounds rocking, there are some technical
constraints (initially found).

1.  Major problem is the packages which needs to download other data's from
different sources during
     Installation. e.g. The most commonly used package in Ubuntu is
ubuntu-restricted-extras. When
     we try to install that package, itself it installs a set of other
packages form Ubuntu repo. Till this point
     everything is alright. Problem begins after this. Like
Ubuntu-restricted-extras installs a package named
     ttf--mscorefonts-installer. This small installer itself comes from
ubuntu repo, but then it downloads the
     compressed fonts from sourceforge.net in temp folder, uncompress those,
put them in /usr/share/fonts
     folder and then update font cache. Similar thing happens with
flashplugins-installer, too.

     So, the .deb file of this installers can be found in offline repo
(downloaded from Ubuntu repo), but to
     complete the installation, internet connection will be required.
Otherwise it may result incomplete installation
     and broken packages. We have a good chance for brainstorming to sort
out this problem.

2.  Some important packages is not available in Online repo either, i.e.
Ubuntu Tweak, Scim-avro etc. But it can
     be easily solved by adding and indexing these packages manually.

3.  ... ... ...

===============

So far I have figured out these facts. Does anyone have any other ideas or
any additions?



[ Disclaimer: This mail is not anything like quotations from religious
books. So, Errors (including spellings and grammar) and Omissions are
expected. :P ]

Peace,
---
Shabab Mustafa