Creating a local apt repository?

[Greg Trounson]

Panu Matilainen wrote:
> On Sun, 28 Dec 2003, Greg Trounson wrote:
> 
> 
>>Panu Matilainen wrote:
>>
>>>On Sat, 27 Dec 2003, Greg Trounson wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>>Gidday,
>>>>
>>>>Not strictly Fedora-centric, but if I can get it working under RH9, I 
>>>>plan to deploy it to my Fedora machines.
>>>>
>>>>Since I'm on a dial-up connection, I have copied the complete set of RH9 
>>>>rpms into one directory on my machine in an attempt at creating a local 
>>>>mirror for apt.
>>>>
>>>>I have run
>>>>"genbasedir --flat --bloat --bz2only --partial --progress 
>>>>/mainarchive/redhat9 localrpms"
>>>>on this directory, and the appropriate pkglist.localrpms.bz2 etc have 
>>>>been created in /mainarchive/redhat9/base.
>>>>I have added
>>>>"rpm file:/apt/ /mainarchive/redhat9 localrpms"
>>>
>>>            ^^^^^
>>>
>>>If the directory is /mainarchive/redhat9 then that's what you have to use 
>>>as the path, eg "rpm file:/mainarchive redhat9 localrpms" is what you 
>>>should use for that - you can't invent parts of the path and have apt find 
>>>whatever you intended :)
>>>
>>
>>Thanks, using that syntax got it working!
>>
>>Apt still has gnumeric, evolution and about 50 other essential programs 
>>marked as 'broken' and wants to remove them before doing anything.
>>
>>I was hoping that pointing apt to a local archive, showing that those 
>>programs *are* in fact okay to have installed, would have fixed it.
> 
> 
> No, that's got nothing to do with apt considering something broken: there 
> are some missing dependencies on your system and apt, by it's design, 
> requires 100% coherency of the package database.
> 
> Have you tried "apt-get -f install" to fix the situation? And if that's 
> the "wants to remove 50 packages" thing you should look at the output of 
> "apt-get -o debug:pkgproblemresolver=1 -f install" to see *why* it wants 
> to remove those packages and then resolve that issue one way or another. 
> If you can't figure it out, mail the output here or to me personally and 
> I'll have a look at what it's about. 
> 
> Oh and btw - one potential cause is that you're using apt-0.5.15cnc4 on 
> RH9 which has a known problem of treating Epochs differently than rpm on 
> RH9, can be worked around by adding "--promoteepoch" to RPM::Options 
> configuration item or by upgrading to apt-0.5.15cnc5.
> 

Ah, stting the Options section of /etc/apt/apt.conf to 
{"--promoteepoch";} fixed it.

I thought it was strange that apt wanted to remove, then reinstall 
several key packages...

thanks for the tip,
Greg