How to Keep Your System Up to Date When You're Not Directly Connected To Broadband

Keeping your system up to date and installing new programs isn't easy if your system is not hooked up to broadband. I know. For quite a while I lived out in the woods, where I had no option to connect my computer to broadband. However, if you have broadband access at a library or cafe, you can download the necessary files to a USB drive and I'll show you how to install them in a safe manner.

You should have at least a 1GB drive. Smaller sizes will work, but anything 128MB or below will be real painful as you will have to make multiple trips.

Ready? Let's go.

1. First, open your USB drive and create a folder called rpms in its root. Inside rpms, create 2 folders, pclinuxos and tinyme. Inside of each of those two folders, create a base folder.
2. At the place where you have broadband access, browse to the PCLinuxOS repositories: http://spout.ussg.indiana.edu/linux/pclinuxos/pclinuxos/apt/pclinuxos/2007/
3. Download all the files in the base directory and place them on your USB drive inside the rpms/pclinuxos/base folder.
4. Browse to the TinyMe repositories: http://tinyme.pclosusers.com/apt/2007/
5. Download all the files in the base directory and place them on your USB drive inside the rpms/tinyme/base folder.
6. Plug your USB drive into the computer you want to update and open the drive in the file manager¹⁾. Copy the path that is in the URL bar.
7. Open Synaptic. Go to Settings→ Repositories and make sure all the boxes are unchecked
8. Click the New button.
   1. In the URI section, put this in:

      file://

   2. Then paste in the path to your drive so it looks something like this:

      file:///media/disk/

   3. For the Distribution line, put in

      rpms/pclinuxos

   4. The Section(s) line should have

      main extra nonfree kde

9. Click the New button again and repeat, except:
   1. For the Distribution line, put in

      rpms/tinyme

   2. The Section(s) line should have

      main nonfree tinyme

10. Click OK and click on Reload→ Mark All Upgrades. Now go to File→ Save Markings As…→ give the file an appropriate name and save it to your USB drive. Quit Synaptic and choose to discard the marked changes.
11. Go back to the place where you have broadband internet, open the file in a text editor, open the PCLinuxOS repositories in a web browser, and download the packages you need. Save them in the rpms folder.
12. Back at the system you want to update, copy all the RPMs (as root) from the rpms folder to /var/cache/apt/archives/.
13. Open Synaptic and click on Mark All Upgrades–> Apply–> Apply.

Congradulations, you've just updated your system!

Installing new packages to your system is fairly similar.

1. Bring your system fully up to date following the above instructions. Do not skip this step!
2. Open Synaptic and mark the applications for installation that you want. Now go to File→ Save Markings As…→ give the file an appropriate name→ save it to your USB drive. Quit Synaptic and choose to discard the marked changes.
3. Go back to the place where you have broadband internet, open the file in a text editor, open the PCLinuxOS and TinyMe repositories in a web browser, and download the packages you need. Save them in the rpms folder.
4. Back at the system you want to update, copy all the RPMs (as root) from the rpms folder to /var/cache/apt/archives/.
5. Open Synaptic→ File→ Read Markings→ Select the file you created in step 2→ Apply→ Apply.