How to create an offline repository for debian non-free? - linux

Question

I am using debian squeeze and want to create an offline repository or a cd/dvd for the debian non-free branch. I looked around the internet and all i found out is that there are neither iso images nor there are jidgo files for creating such image so I had the idea to fetch the packages from one of the debian package servers using:
wget -r --no-parent -nH -A*all.deb,*any.deb,*i386.deb \
ftp://debian.oregonstate.edu/debian/pool/non-free/
I know that that I must use file: in my */etc/apt/sources.list* to indicate local repositories but how do I actually create one so that apt or aptitude understands this?

Answer 1

(Answered in a questioned edit. Converted to a community wiki answer. See What is the appropriate action when the answer to a question is added to the question itself? )
The OP wrote:
Update: With a few ugly tricks I was able to extract the needed data from pool and the dist folder.
I used the unzipped Package.gz to do this:
grep '^Package\:.*' Packages|awk '{print $2}' >> Names.lst
grep '^Version\:.*' Packages|awk '{print $2}' >> Versions.lst
grep '^Architecture\:.*' Packages|awk '{print $2}' >> Arch.lst
With vim I find and remove the ':' in the file Versions.lst and generate a shorter Content.lst more easy to parse with bash tools:
paste Names.lst Versions.lst Arch.lst >> Content.lst
Now I do this:
cat content.lst | while read line; \
do echo "$(echo $line|awk '{print $1}')\
_$(echo $line|awk '{print $2}')_$(echo $line|awk '{print $3}')";\
done >> content.lst.tmp && mv content.lst.tmp content.lst
which generates me the file names in the debian directory I need. When finishing with my downloads using wget I find and rsync the needed file names. mv does not work here because I needed the structure as it is referring to in Packages.gz:
cat content.lst |while read line; \
do find debian/ -type f -name ${line}.deb -exec \
rsync -rtpog -cisR {} debian2/ \; ;done
rm -r debian && mv debian2 debian
To receive the complete dists tree structure I used wget again:
wget -c -r --no-parent -nH -A*.bz2,*.gz,Release \
ftp://debian.oregonstate.edu/debian/dists/squeeze/non-free/binary-i386/
I think the only thing I have to do now is to create the Contents.gz file.
The Contents.gz file can easily be created using the apt-ftparchive program:
apt-ftparchive contents > Contents-i386 && gzip -f Contents-i386