===================================
howdy nishta...

>>
jj, I did install some tool or another that did what
I believe you are talking about for to make a CD a genuine
repository. Name escapes me. Was still a pita
>>

There's a tool to do that, hmmmm, makes sense. I must
find that.


I just mounted "disc 1" from my woody cd set, to
check on just how it's layed out.

There's a "hidden" directory, one prefixed with a "dot"
at the top of the tree, ".dist".

In side that, there's a file called "info", which contains
a description string, that dselect will use to recognise it.

" Debian GNU/Linux 3.0 r0 "Woody" - Official i386 Binary-1
(2002071"

The next disc will have "Binary-2" instead of "Binary-1".

The rest would be just the same as for a local
repository i would think. I only keep a repository
on a seperate partition rather than on cd, so i'm
speculating that the layout for a cd would be the
same, except for the additional "dot" directory,
[ must get a burner ].

All that involves is creating a heirarchy, such as...

"dists/unstable/main/binary-i386/m"

main can be local/non-free etc.
unstable could be any thing.

The last directory "m" can be anything, containing
subdirectories, named after the package...

"m/modutils/modutils_2.4.26-1_i386.deb"


In the bottom of the "binary-i386" directory you just
need a file called "Packages.gz" that lists the
descriptions of the deb's. And possibly a "Release"
file, not really important. To get the "Packages.gz"
file, a helper script just needs to be run from the top
root directory, above "dists".


"dpkg-scanpackages dists override | gzip >
dists/unstable/main/binary-i386/Packages.gz"


"override", can be called anything and will more often
than not be zero size.

That will scane all directories below the dists
branch, and then create the file and put it in
dists/unstable/main/binary-i386.

To make it more specific you could do...

"dpkg-scanpackages dists/unstable/main override |
gzip > dists/unstable/main/binary-i386/Packages.gz"


That would scane all below "dists/unstable/main"

Put that on a cd, with the dot directory... ???
who knows, .

I haven't tryed it myself though, just local
repositories.

Hope that wasn't to over the top, or anything... but,
i do tend to find debs documentation a bit on the vague
side myself. Which dosen't
help much, and tends to give the impression that deb's
some sought of rocket science distro.

Which it isn't. It's just that they can't write docs
very well


>>
as far as the mandrake and magician, I was
thinking maybe it was the publishers of Mandrake
the Magician comic. I have to go google

>>


Hows all the screw ups there'v been doing over the year.
The great "LG drive" screw up, earlier in the year,
the occasional table scramble screw up... there's never
a magician around when there needed

hmmmm, i think iv'e forgotten the thread topic, next
favourite distro i think. Well, with knoppix, i
can see a sid, with heaps of things installed and set
up. So it's really good to use as a template to work
on my existing modified woody with, which is at sid
any way, except for libc6. And, as knoppix is deb...
and deb is about as straight forward, unhyped
as it gets... And it takes years to learn a system
anyway. Why blow it by hopping. I'll just stick
with these two.

As RH was my first Linux, and they are known for
their innovation/patching, i probably wouldn't
mind having FC in, just to have a look.

jm
===================================