Getting a list of what apt-get *would* get

[beforewisdom]

Hi;

I want to do some very big downloads, but I am on a slow dial up connection at home.

I would like to download the stuff at a friends house, burn it onto a cd, bring it home, and use apt-get to install from cd.

How would I ( is it possible ) to tell apt-get to do something, but instead of downloading the files just make a list of the files it would have gotten for the job and the urls it would have gotten those files from?

Steve

[Tech2k]

Get the list by using eterm (or konsole) so you can scroll and run this command :
apt-get install -s pkg-name

then you could grab all the pkgs from the debian.org package search.

later if you want to install them offline just copy all the debs to your /var/cache/apt/archives and then apt-get update and install

if you dont want to update then "apt-get -f install" *might* work too.

[beforewisdom]

Get the list by using eterm (or konsole) so you can scroll and run this command :
apt-get install -s pkg-name

then you could grab all the pkgs from the debian.org package search.

later if you want to install them offline just copy all the debs to your /var/cache/apt/archives and then apt-get update and install

if you dont want to update then "apt-get -f install" *might* work too.

Well, I want to install gnome and I want to upgrade knoppix to debian unstable.

THats a huge number of packages to search across debian.org and cut/past urls for.

Is there another method?

Steve

[garyng]

just use testing/unstable of debian.org as the source.

[MichielioZ]

If commandline APT is confusing, I just use Synaptic for packages..
Maybe an option ?
Good luck.

[Tech2k]

other suggestions ?
take your hard drive over to your firends..or your whole tower.If you dont know apt really well you will probally break your system doing that upgrade.

http://www.debian.org/distrib/packages

Another option is to try morphix.It is 100% pure sid (debian unstable) and the heavygui combined iso has gnome 2.