How to create a USB flash software repository?
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From: JT on 20 Jan 2010 11:47 On 20/01/10 17:42, script||die wrote: > Give'em DVD's? :-)))))))) > They certainly can find a use for them? Put coffeecups on them, beerglasses or whatever they drool over in these places..... -- Kind regards, JT
From: script||die on 20 Jan 2010 12:06 On 01/19/2010 02:59 PM, David Bolt wrote: > On Tuesday 19 Jan 2010 16:55, while playing with a tin of spray paint, > script||die painted this mural: > >> On 01/19/2010 10:57 AM, houghi wrote: >>> David Bolt wrote: >>>> That is a much harder task. You'd need to have a complete list of all >>>> the packages installed on each machine, including any possible >>>> architecture or release differences. Maintaining them would be a bit of >>>> a pain so it'd probably be easier to just mirror the entire selection >>>> of packages. >>> >>> It depends on the number of machines. I just connect them to the >>> standard connection over the interweb and have everythjing I need. >>> Instead of downloading a LOT that I don't need, I will download some >>> things twice. I would think that I need a lot of machines (20+ at least) >>> per version and architecture to make it a bit interesting. > > <snip> > >> Both of you seem to have something I don't: a level of expertise. > > Don't worry. You'll pick it up over time and there's always this group > and the openSUSE mailing lists and forums if you get stuck. > >> I find >> myself in a situation of a relative dimwit having been volunteered to be >> 'tha man' to maintain half a dozen systems for friends, family and one >> benevolent community's machines all for free! > > Hope you at least get a decent cuppa while doing this. Years ago, while > acting as tech support for my mother, I had to bring my own tea bags. > It was either that or drink herbal tea, and I haven't tasted a single > herbal tea that I could drink. I could tell stories of peanut butter keyboards, makeup mirrors hanging on the new LCD monitor, etc. The one thattook the cake was a laptop used (briefly) to park a hot bowl of stew on. >> If I let slip the term >> 'rural' that should be ispiring. I don't even have time to spill coffee >> on the keyboard much less get deep into networking. > > If all you're doing is carting around a copy of the update mirror, you > don't need to know a lot about networking. Just enough to be able to > create your mirror and how to configure the other machines to use it > when it's available. For a while I had thought of doing it from home but that will always be too far for my skills. >> I shudda stuck with >> freakin windows and then NOBODY would be asking nothing of me, really, >> I'm looking for a way to let everyone just fend for themselves :-( > > Once you get the monicker of "computer guy", it can be hard to get rid > of it. I've managed to stop most of the people that used to ask me for > help, but still have to contend with three. Knowing I've switched > completely to Linux means two of them rarely ask for help, since > they're still using WinXP and are unwilling to change. That's my case too but as the windows fans are thinning out I'm thinking of reverting my expertise to end up with less work! >> A lot of otherwise commendable effort has seen online istalls and >> updating improve over time because it's easy and popular but maybe the >> offline has been neglected somewhat. > > You can do offline updates almost as easily. Create a mirror and point > YaST/zypper at it. Don't enable automatic updates or there will be > complaints about missing repos. > > One thing you could do is to make sure the names for the update repos > is the same on all the machines, no matter which version they're > running, and then have a small script on the USB stick/portable drive > that enables the update repo, refreshes it, does the update, and then > disables it again. With a usb.hd adapter and a nice 32gb usb stick I'm now in a position to greatly reduce the ritual-load. Just did one where I plugged in the usb, mounted it under the last local repo mountpoint and did the update. Went real easy. I'll be standardizing this method for myself in the weeks ahead. > Something like this should work, although you may need to do some > testing: I'll keep what you wrote to look into. I know zyppper will have to be a study2do one of these days. >>> Didn't you used to have a Mac? >> >> Naaw, I was delivered in an amiga box and then went compuke-awol for years. > > Never really liked the Amigas. I could use them, and even did on a few > occasions, but always ended up going back to Atari systems[1] which I > much preferred. You gotta admit it had some good features, mine didn't even have an HD so it was pretty silent for one thing. > [0] Well, two systems. I've still got an old system running SuSE 9.1. > As for it's job, I can't remember what it originally did. I used to use > it as a laptop but haven't done so in years. Nowadays, the only thing > it does is contribute to my distributed.net key rates. > > [1] Is this where we get to have another Atari/Amiga flame-war? I do > sometimes miss the good old days, and being able to throw in comments > about how RISCOS is better than both their GUIs was a nice way to stir > the pot :-) Who's got time for flamewars? I'm just catching up on what I can and am outta here. Thanks :-)
From: script||die on 20 Jan 2010 12:20 On 01/19/2010 09:57 AM, David Bolt wrote: > On Tuesday 19 Jan 2010 06:03, while playing with a tin of spray paint, > script||die painted this mural: > > >> Getting the whole distribution file tree is the hard part, > > Not really. I maintain a local web server specifically for network > installs[0] of the various versions, all of which were retrieved using > rsync to create the local mirror. > >> keeping the >> update tree update is harder, > > A daily/weekly cron job to mirror one of the update mirrors works > perfectly for me, and has done for several years now. I think I first > started doing this with SuSE 8.0 or 8.1, not sure which one. And, once > I set it up, I've had it mirroring all the versions since 7.0. > >> and loading only what's in use or needed >> is hardest. > > That is a much harder task. You'd need to have a complete list of all > the packages installed on each machine, including any possible > architecture or release differences. Maintaining them would be a bit of > a pain so it'd probably be easier to just mirror the entire selection > of packages. > >> All this could be so much simpler if you could just tell >> Yast here's where I want you to save all downloaded files, and here's >> where I want you to read them from (always in terms of parent folders, >> dynamic indexing in ram only, and selectable deltas/rpms whatever). Then >> you could take that portable drive or usb to another machine and bingo. > > A USB drive would be a better option if mirroring the updates is > included as there's quite often package and/or metadata changes, and > it's a good idea to minimise writes to USB memory sticks. Also, while a > USB key may (possibly) be a little faster, they aren't up to the same > capacity as a hard drive and are also a lot more expensive. > >> Before beginning the move Yast will export to wherever you want >> (should always be this way) the packages list. You can later import this >> same list as the basis for completing an initially minimal install after >> the first boot on another machine (or a new install on another partition). >> >> /etc/yzpp/repos.d is the folder I copy into the new system on the other >> machine. This folder is where Yast notes the local rpm repo paths for >> itself (it takes a lot of time to configure it). > > Why not export them using: > > zypper lr -e repos > > copy the repos.repo file to the other machine and then import the repos > using: > > zypper ar -r repos > > <snip> > >> rsync -vidhut --bwlimit=10 --progress \ >> --exclude *debug* \ >> --exclude *delta* \ >> --exclude *patch* \ >> --exclude *-info* \ >> --exclude INDEX* \ >> --exclude *acroread* \ >> --exclude *xen* \ >> --exclude eclipse* \ >> --exclude *-i18n* \ >> --exclude *-html* \ >> --exclude *ava* \ >> --exclude OpenOffice* \ >> --exclude *devel-doc* \ >> --delete-excluded \ >> --delete-after \ >> ftp5.gwdg.de::pub/opensuse/update/11.2/rpm/i586/ >> /0/sa15/comp/fix/suse112/suse-up-i586 > > You're skipping several packages there, which could cause possible > issues when doing an update, although I can understand a reason for > doing so. Purely out of curiosity, is there a reason for you skipping > the delta and patch packages? Not in particular, originally the idea was just to keep everything as KISS as possible. Somehow I still prefer just full rpms but other than that the aim is not to download all the internationalizations or huge java files (I always can separtately on need). > Anyway, I have a daily cron job that mirrors the entire trees for the > various versions I'm using. The command used to do the mirroring in > that script[1] is: > > rsync -avP \ > --exclude rpm/ppc \ > --exclude rpm/ppc64 \ > --exclude deltas/*.ppc.delta.rpm \ > --exclude deltas/*.ppc64.delta.rpm \ > --safe-links \ > --delete-after \ > --delete-excluded \ > --timeout=1800 \ > "${server}/${version}" \ > "${dest}/" > > $server is[2]: > > rsync://ftp-1.gwdg.de/pub/opensuse/update/ > > $dest and $version are the destination root directory, and the version > being mirrored. I'll rework the script, rsync is another study2do downline. > For my own local 11.2 update mirror the full path is on > an NFS exported directory which all my machines would see as: > > /mounts/playing/share/suse/i386/update/11.2/ > > > [0] My network is configured with a PXE boot server set up to allow > installation of all the current releases, along with a few other > network based tools, e.g. a network bootable gparted and memtest are > the main tools. I've given up on networking the updates as such; all I need is a single good repo that I can move around. > [1] My script actually reads the active mirrors, server path and server > options from a MySQL database. This makes it a lot easier to maintain > as all I need to do is set/reset a flag and a particular version is > enabled or disabled. This means there's no need for me to edit the > script to remove old versions, although new versions do require a new > entry in the table. For the curious, a copy of my script is here: > > http://www.davjam.org/~davjam/linux/scripts/get-updates > > [2] the reason for $server being in the database, rather than being a > part of the script, is that originally the server paths were versioned. > Having the server path stored in the database was actually quite useful > because, when openSUSE 10.3 was released, the path was changed from the > previously used path: rsync://ftp-1.gwdg.de/pub/linux/suse/suse_update/
From: EOS on 20 Jan 2010 13:14 Stephen Horne wrote: > > Is there a tool that can create a software repository on a USB flash > drive, including all software currently installed on one machine, so > that I can use that repository to install the same software on a > non-networked machine? > make you're own openSUSE distro on cd/dvd/iso/....? http://susestudio.com/ -- EOS www.photo-memories.be Running KDE 4.4 RC1 / openSUSE 11.2
From: Stephen Horne on 20 Jan 2010 15:39
On Wed, 20 Jan 2010 11:46:47 +0000, David Bolt <blacklist-me(a)davjam.org> wrote: >From my point of view, there's a heck of a difference. Apart from >anything else, I'm still not convinced about the long term reliability >of memory based devices. Then again, I've not used any memory devices >heavily for long enough to make any of them fail. Hard disks fail. Personally, I've managed to only have one fail myself in quite a few years - and that one was brand new. Until recently, I haven't kept my machines more than 2 or 3 years before replacing them, but that's a thing of the past now. My father just had two hard drives fail in the same machine within two months. The only problem with that is that he still "can't understand" backups. > I tend to use a >memory card or two for a few years, then upgrade them to cards of two >to four times the size. As for USB keys, the only reason I have any >other than the first 512MB one I bought is because someone else got me >them as gifts. I rarely use them and, if I didn't have them, wouldn't >really miss them. I used a 1GB stick for maybe 4 years for my main local subversion repository. It's a very convenient way of keeping all your own files in sync on several machines, with a lot of additional benefits - though no good for large collections of photos or videos, of course. At the moment, all my local repositories are on a 250GB laptop-sized external hard drive, but that just isn't as convenient. I'll probably move them to a 4GB stick some time soon. Oh - and for anyone who's interested, you can keep a subversion repository on an NTFS partition (FAT is best avoided) and share it between Windows and Linux. You may need to install and play with ntfs-config though - my guess is that this is necessary if you upgraded from OpenSUSE 11.1 to 11.2 rather than doing a clean re-install. Without it, NTFS partitions are always mounted as read-only. Despite very regular use, the only problem I've ever had with a memory stick is that the 16GB stick I chose badly, and paid too much for, is very slow. The only storage medium that has proved seriously unreliable over the last 10 years is optical disks. Since you can now buy 3.5in internal hard drives for not much more per GB that DVD-Rs, and certainly less per GB that DVD-RWs, the answer is to probably think of a docking station as the drive and the internal hard drives as the media. Now all we need is storage cases for hard drives. What did I do with all those VHS cases, I wonder... |