On Thursday 19 August 2021 at 01:01:09, Hendrik Boom wrote:

> I need to download a package to install on a machine that is currently
> air-gapped.

Do you not even trust the connectivity to give it a proxy server?

> I have to download an i386 package for chimaera on an AMD64 beowulf
> machine.

On the face of it, that's easy... but you know that :)

> I'll be transferring that package by sneakernet, and then installing it
> using dpkg..
> If it turns out to have dependencies, I'l have to repeat the process for
> those dependencies.

No chance of setting up a local apt-cacher, and allowing the chimaera machine
to use that? Safer / more restricted than a general proxy, and if you have
the requirement now, I bet you'll have it again in the future... :)

> How do I go about doing the download?

I don't think you're asking "how do I fetch packages using wget so I can then
install them using dpkg". I'm assuming you're asking "how can I work out
which dependent packages I should get at the same time, to make this whole
process as painless as possible", so my suggestion is that you start from
https://packages.debian.org/bullseye/packagename and look at everything
labelled with "dep".

Check on your chimaera machine whether these are installed, and then you know
(at the first level) whether you need to install some of those first.

The second level would be tricker and more tedious - finding out which packages
your depended-upon packages depend on, but that's the beauty of apt(itude)
compared to dpkg :)

Since dpkg won't install something if it depends on something else which isn't
already installed, you'll need to do things in sequence - install the
depended-upon packages first, then whatever depends on them, but with any luck,
this won't go more than 1 or 2 levels deep.

If it does get more complicated than that, I really would suggest using
https://packages.debian.org/search?keywords=apt-cacher (either the original,
or the -ng version) to "bridge your air gap" but only for package downloads.

Regards,


Antony.

--
2 days of trial and error can easily save you 5 minutes spent reading the
manual.

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