[SOLVED] Offline upate and keeping packages

[claudecat]

Ok, I've searched a bit and learned a bit, but haven't achieved my goal. I have 2 machines with near identical installs of Mageia 2 and I need to keep both updated. I'm trying to figure out how to avoid downloading all the updates twice. I know that from the command line I can add --noclean to urpmi --auto-update to have the packages saved to /var/cache/urpmi/rpms. I did this and then transferred the files to the other machine but it appears to ignore them, claiming it wants to grab 155mb of updates. Am I missing something?

Also, is there something I can put in my /etc/urpmi/urpmi.cfg so that it will always default to --noclean? I tried adding { post-clean: 0 } and that did not work... I saw the files briefly, but they were removed as usual upon install.

This entire process is SO much easier on other distros, and I find urpmi from the command line rather confusing, but I do like Mageia and would like to continue to use it. If I can't figure this out I may have to give it up. Any help would be much appreciated!

[tom_]

Welcome on Mageia, claudecat

I did this and then transferred the files to the other machine but it appears to ignore them, claiming it wants to grab 155mb of updates. Am I missing something?

have you seen if it really redownloads the files?
it could be just an information

Also, is there something I can put in my /etc/urpmi/urpmi.cfg so that it will always default to --noclean?

you can create a new command for that, using alias:

alias claudecat_urpmi='urpmi --noclean'

ehmmm.. better if you find a shorter name

to have that command defined on each session you can add that line to the file /root/.bashrc

use

Code: Select all

man alias


to have more details about the alias command

[ah7013]

Also, is there something I can put in my /etc/urpmi/urpmi.cfg so that it will always default to --noclean? I tried adding { post-clean: 0 } and that did not work... I saw the files briefly, but they were removed as usual upon install.

Adding "post-clean: 0" should work. I did try it here and it worked fine. Could you post the output of

Code: Select all

head /etc/urpmi/urpmi.cfg


with the post-clean option added? It should be in between the top two curly brackets e.g:

Code: Select all

[andrew@localhost ~]$ head /etc/urpmi/urpmi.cfg
{
post-clean: 0
}

Core\ Release http://repo.home.local/mageia/distrib/2/x86_64/media/core/release {
  key-ids: 80420f66
}

Core\ Release\ Debug http://repo.home.local/mageia/distrib/2/x86_64/media/debug/core/release {
  ignore


[claudecat]

Thanks for the responses.

ah: the post-clean: 0 is now working after a reboot. Strange that it did not work immediately upon editing the file. Anyway, that's sorted.

What is still a mystery is that even after putting all the updates in /var/cache/urpmi/rpms on the second (not yet updated) machine, urpmi --auto-update claims it needs to download 155mb of updates. And yes, it WILL download them rather than using the cached ones (I let it do it's thing briefly to make sure). These were 2 installs done exactly the same way (accepting all defaults - no custom package selection) from the dvd - the only difference is in graphics cards (one nvidia, one amd - both using the free drivers). For some reason urpmi is just not seeing the stuff in /var/cache/urpmi/rpms. Why?!? Again, this is really simple in deb-based distros, Arch, Fedora, even Slackware. Why is urpmi so reluctant to use cached packages? Or am I just missing something?

[claudecat]

Well, I'm an idiot... in all my flailing around trying to solve this I didn't notice that half of the updates I had copied via a flash drive had been corrupted into zero-length files along the way. Tried again with a different flash drive and now all is working as expected (both machines fully updated). I'm not sure it was necessary, but I ended up creating a "custom medium" pointing at /var/cache/urpmi/rpms. Would it have worked without that step?

Sorry for wasting your time and thanks again for the help!

[Ken-Bergen]

I'm not sure it was necessary, but I ended up creating a "custom medium" pointing at /var/cache/urpmi/rpms. Would it have worked without that step?

Sorry for wasting your time and thanks again for the help!

Unless you create a hdlist for the media in /var/cache/urpmi/rpms it will be ignored as a medium but the files therein will be used as if they were downloaded.

If you or anyone else learned something from this it wasn't a waste of time but a learning experience.

[doktor5000]

You may want to have a look at https://wiki.mageia.org/en/Urpmi-proxy