Updating the Badger (v5.10) by dialup...

[Peter Garrett]

On Sat, 13 Jan 2007 21:29:28 -0500
Brian Lunergan <ff809 at ncf.ca> wrote:

> it's giving me an 
> estimate of 179 packages to update weighing in at an estimated 169m (I'm 
> assuming that's non-ISO shorthand for megabytes). Now, on dial up that is a 
> non-starter to do in one sitting when I'm using the household phone line. Can 
> that list be downloaded in smaller (considerably smaller) blocks or is that 
> likely to cause problems with the operation of the system.

You can choose a smaller set at a time. The packages will download, but if
there are dependencies missing they will not install immediately. This is
OK though - you can do it in several sessions.

When I was on dial-up I used to do this kind of thing overnight to minimise
inconvenience. 

The packages land in /var/cache/apt/archives , so on subsequent downloads
apt/synaptic/update-manager will find the already downloaded packages as
needed.

Peter