creating a modified local repository

[Matt Price]

Hi Folks,

at some point I thought I'd found the answers to some of these
questions, but in the interim I've lost track of them, so any help you
can give is appreciated.

I'm about to start a linux-based computer education class at a local
housing project; students will take their (old, donated) computers
home with them at the end.  It's an exciting project.  We'll be using
Ubuntu as the class distro -- I myself use straight debian sid, though
I'm very impressed with what I'ves een of Ubuntu so far.  I have a
bunch of the (flashy!) Warty cds, which I will be giving out to the
students.  

so, issues:  
-we won't have internet in the classroom, but I have an external hard
drive and a couple of old ethernet hubs.  I'd like to mirror the Warty
repository to the harddrive in order to keep the distro up to date.
Anyone know the procedure on this?  Are there straightforward methods
for restricting the mirror to particular parts of the repository --
e.g., maybe just security updates?  
-I'd also kinda like to have the hoary repo up as well, to demonstrate
how dist-upgrade works.  
-I'd also like to add a couple of custom packages to the repo, to
accomodate the old hardware we're using (compaq deskpro's from 2000,
333mHz CPU's, 128mg ram, small hard drives:
   - a custom kernel with apm activated rather than acpi, & perhaps
some functionality removed, and are there prehaps some compile flags
that should be set?
   - xfce4.2 packages -- gnome2.8 runs ok on this hardware, but is a
little slow.  xfce4.2 doesn't seem to be in universe yet.  has anyone
made ubuntu-compatible debs yet?  any suggestions on how I should do
it myself?
  
Anyway, Any suggestion on how to do all this would be welcome.  I'm a
pretty good teacher, but actually kind of a mediocre linux admin, so
I'm still somewhat uncomfortable with lots of this stuff.  

thanks,

Matt


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Matt Price	    matt.price at utoronto.ca
History Department, University of Toronto
(416) 978-2094
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