Using /var/cache/apt

[Nigel Henry]

On Monday 09 February 2009 12:56, Robert Parker wrote:
> A friend is moving his Ubuntu install from a usb stick to a dedicated
> partition on his hard drive. He wants to avoiding downloading all of
> the updates into the new installation.
>
> How to reuse the packages in /var/archives/apt?
>
> He will naturally be making a backup copy of /var as well as /home
> before starting off.
>
> Thanks,
> Bob Parker

Hi Bob.

In my case I have a FAT32 partition on another harddrive where I save the 
archives from various distros, and that partition is accessable from all the 
distros that are on that machine. I simply click on the desktop icon for the 
Fat32 partition, open the directory for the distro where I want to save the 
archives, then I'm ready to go.

Next open Nautilus on Gnome, and navigate to /var/cache/apt. Right click on 
the archives directory, click copy, then paste the directory into the open 
directory on the FAT32 partition (which doesn't need root permissions to 
paste to). During the paste process you'll get a pop-up "can't copy the lock 
file", just press skip, and the paste will proceed to completion.

Going the other way, from the FAT32 partition to the distro where you want to 
copy the archives to, you'll need write permissions to write 
to /var/cache/apt. With Gnome that I don't use much, sudo nautilus in a 
terminal, navigate to /var/cache/apt, click copy on the archives directory in 
the FAT32 partition, and paste into /var/cache/apt directory in the open root 
accessable Nautilus. You'll be asked what you want to do, so click "merge 
all", if your in Gnome, or if in KDE "overwrite all", then the paste will 
proceed.

Of course you'll need access to both locations, and make sure that when you 
paste, that it's into the /var/cache/apt directory, not 
into /var/cache/apt/archives, otherwise you'll end up with an archives 
directory within the existing archives directory.

Anyway, that's how i do it with gui apps.

All the best.

Nigel.