Gutsy upgrade question: Manually downloading some packages using wget

[David Vincent]

Hugo Heden wrote:
> On 10/29/07, Derek Broughton <news at pointerstop.ca> wrote:
>> Hugo Heden wrote:
>>
>>> On 10/29/07, Wulfy <wulfmann at tiscali.co.uk> wrote:
>>>> Hugo Heden wrote:
>>>>> So obviously there is an internal database that apt-get/update-manager
>>>>> uses, and I would want to *manually* add the manually downloaded
>>>>> deb-files to that database..
>>>>>
>>>>> Any ideas?
>>>>>
>>>>> Hugo Heden
>>>> The only thing I can think of which might work (though others may have
>>>> more knowledge than I do) is when you've moved the debs to the archive,
>>>> run:
>>>>
>>>> sudo dpkg -i *.deb
>>>>
>>>> which will install all the debs.  I'm not sure that would work...  if
>>>> there were dependency problems (old debs?) in there, it might bomb out
>>>> and leave you in a more difficult state than you're in now.  :@(
>>>>
>>> Thanks again Wulfmann,
>>>
>>> Yeah, I tried that, but since those deb-files are "from Gutsy" and my
>>> current install is Feisty, dpkg refuses to install the packages due to
>>> conflicting and missing dependencies.
>> Then you can't install them, period.
>>
>> Your best bet is to download the _source_ debs from gutsy, and recompile
>> them on your system - but there's no guarantee they'll compile, either.
> 
> Thanks Derek,
> 
> I appreciate all the pointers.
> 
> We'll see what I'll end up doing. I *will* be able to solve this
> somehow (there's always Fresh Install), so it is not a matter of life
> or death or anything -- now it's more that I'm getting curious.. I am
> not sure I understand why I can't do this (but I'm rather close to
> just taking your word for it..)
> 
> I mean, if update-manager does (in principle)
> 
> 1) Modify sources.list
> 2) Download packages
> 3) Install those packages (resolving dependencies etc)
> 
> then should I not be able to intervene in step 2 and "help"
> update-manager to get around a crappy-network-connection-problem by
> manually downloading some packages?
> 
> How about creating a local repository containing the manually
> downloaded deb-files, and then try to convince apt-get (or, better
> yet, update-manager) that this repository "belongs to gutsy"..
> 
> Something like this:
> 
> Start by creating an index file, Packages.gz:
> 
> $ cd $HOME/dir/containing/debs
> $ dpkg-scanpackages . /dev/null > Packages
> $ gzip Packages
> 
> And then editing /etc/apt/sources.list -- replace all occurrences of
> "feisty" with "gutsy", and adding my local repository to the top of
> the file:
> 
> deb file:/home/heden/dir/containing/debs gutsy universe
> 
> and lastly
> 
> $ sudo apt-get update
> $ sudo apt-get dist-upgrade
> 
> Would something like that be an option? I realize that I probably have
> to fix some errors above (for example, not all packages are from
> universe so perhaps I need to create a more complicated local
> repository, "resembling" a real repository) -- but in principle?
> 
> 
> Best regards
> 
> Hugo Heden
> 

Just thinking...

- edit /etc/apt/sources.list and change all feisty entries to gutsy, 
also disable any third-party repos which may pose problems

- then run...

$sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get dist-upgrade -d

...to download and not install any packages

- edit /etc/apt/sources.list and change everything back to feisty from 
gutsy, leave third-party repos disabled

- then run...

$update-manager -d

...to start the upgrade with the update-manager and the now cached 
locally packaged.  i doubt that will get everything though, there are 
bound to be some dependencies or new packages needed.

-d