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Thread: Offline Software Installation - Download with Windows

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    Offline Software Installation - Download with Windows

    Offline Software Installation - Download with Windows

    In light of T&T policy changes I have moved this tutorial to my blog and will maintain it there. http://cortman.wordpress.com/2012/07...-with-windows/

    Thank you for your thread and the work you have done in keeping it current and of use to the community.


    It's commonly known how to download programs (and dependencies) for an offline computer with an online machine running Ubuntu, but what if your only access to the internet is through Windows?
    You can still do it! I've written a small program in VB.Net that should run on any Windows computer. It takes a user-specified download script and downloads the files just the same as Ubuntu would.
    You can download this program on SourceForge here. It's available as a zipped .exe, or you can download the entire source code from the same site and compile it yourself if you prefer.
    If you did a fresh installation of 11.10 Oneiric Ocelot or higher, you'll need to install Synaptic on the offline machine first. (For some reason it didn't come bundled with 11.10) This is a little involved but very doable. Here's a link to my tutorial on that procedure.

    1. On offline Ubuntu machine: Open a terminal with Control+Alt+t and type

    Code:
    synaptic
    This will open up the Synaptic Package manager. You can browse available software in the column on the far left, or if you know specifically what you're looking for, type it into the search box.
    When you find the software you want to install, right click it and select "Mark for Installation". If a dialog comes up "Mark Additional Required Changes" select Mark. This will ensure that all the packages required for the selected software get installed as well.

    2. Once you've picked your software, go to File>Generate Package Download Script. Save the script to its own folder (call the folder "packages") on a USB flash drive or some other portable media. You can name the script whatever you want, but for clarity we'll assume you named it "download".
    The Package Download Script is just a little text file that will tell your online computer which packages to download, so you can transfer them to the offline computer.



    3. Take the flash drive to your online Windows computer. Download Wassail and extract the .exe program file from the .zip into the same "packages" folder.






    NOTE: If when you try to run Wassail it returns an error message saying that the .NET framework is not installed, it's easily fixed. You can download .NET 4.0 for free at http://www.microsoft.com/download/en....aspx?id=17851

    4.Double click the Wassail.exe and press the "Select Download Script" button. Find and select your script.



    This will download the packages to the "packages" folder. If you open the folder in a file manager you'll see one or more files with the extension .deb. These are the software package files.

    Wassail will return a message of "Done!" when it is complete. Be patient! Some package files can be quite large.




    5. Copy the "packages" folder containing the .deb files to the /home folder of the offline Ubuntu computer.

    6. Open up a terminal on the offline computer and type

    Code:
    sudo dpkg -iR packages
    You'll be prompted for your administrator password, which will be the same as your user login password. Enter it and Ubuntu will install your software!
    Last edited by wildmanne39; August 22nd, 2012 at 08:52 PM. Reason: added .NET download link

  2. #2
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    Re: Offline Software Installation - Download with Windows

    Thanks, that's a nice concept.
    I've got an Ubuntu Server running on vmware hosted on Windows for web development purposes and updating it's packages is always tricky.
    I could use your program

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    Re: Offline Software Installation - Download with Windows

    If anyone can think of a more succinct title for this thread, I'm open to suggestions. I wanted something fairly descriptive but not too wordy.
    And if any godlike C programmers want to have a stab at translating the program into C (so it'd compile and run on any Windows, with or without .NET framework), let me know!

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    Re: Offline Software Installation - Download with Windows

    I'm not quite following you on step three when you say "download wassail and extract the .exe program file from the .zip into the same packages folder. Everything seems to go ok up until step three when i bring the script over from ubuntu to windows 7 and have to try and unzip it. Also when i go into a file manager i see no .deb files....

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    Re: Offline Software Installation - Download with Windows

    Quote Originally Posted by chanzich View Post
    I'm not quite following you on step three when you say "download wassail and extract the .exe program file from the .zip into the same packages folder. Everything seems to go ok up until step three when i bring the script over from ubuntu to windows 7 and have to try and unzip it. Also when i go into a file manager i see no .deb files....
    So you're having trouble extracting the .exe? Have you actually run the program yet? You can unzip it by right clicking and selecting extract.

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    Re: Offline Software Installation - Download with Windows

    I brought my flash drive back over to my laptop with ubuntu on it. I now see about eight different things with wget starting them and .deb ending. Im assuming these are the eight packages i need for build essential. But when I go into the terminal and enter sudo dpkg -iR Packages (Packages is what i called it) I get dpkg: searched, but found no packages (files matching *.deb).

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    Re: Offline Software Installation - Download with Windows

    Quote Originally Posted by chanzich View Post
    I brought my flash drive back over to my laptop with ubuntu on it. I now see about eight different things with wget starting them and .deb ending. Im assuming these are the eight packages i need for build essential. But when I go into the terminal and enter sudo dpkg -iR Packages (Packages is what i called it) I get dpkg: searched, but found no packages (files matching *.deb).
    They shouldn't start with "wget" - that's part of the script. I just downloaded wassail and ran it on a fresh script, and it worked fine, so I'm not sure what the problem is. May I ask what program you're trying to download? I'll try it here to make sure.
    As far as installing, did you copy them to your /home/your_name folder? They need to be there for the dpkg -iR command to work.
    Sorry it's giving you problems!

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    Re: Offline Software Installation - Download with Windows

    I cant thank you enough for you patients. Im trying to install the build-essential so that I can compile my wireless driver. I have been having a hell of a time. I understand the first few steps but im getting bogged down by having to unzip them. I use 7zip (any suggestions for a better program.) I guess my biggest problem right now is taking them off my jump drive, unzipping them and using wassail. Lol Im might need a step by step procedure. Sorry, like i said i am an absolute noob.

  9. #9
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    Re: Offline Software Installation - Download with Windows

    Quote Originally Posted by chanzich View Post
    I cant thank you enough for you patients. Im trying to install the build-essential so that I can compile my wireless driver. I have been having a of a time. I understand the first few steps but im getting bogged down by having to unzip them. I use 7zip (any suggestions for a better program.) I guess my biggest problem right now is taking them off my jump drive, unzipping them and using wassail. Lol Im might need a step by step procedure. Sorry, like i said i am an absolute noob.
    Don't be sorry for being a beginner! Everyone here was one once too.
    Here it is in a little more detail.

    Download the Wassail.zip file on your Windows computer. Right click Wassail.zip and select "Extract all...". This will bring up the extraction location dialog. Click "browse" and select the "Packages" folder as the extract destination. Click Ok. A second window should come up showing the Wassail.exe file in the Packages folder. Double click Wassail.exe and click "Select download script". Select the download script. Wassail should start downloading, and will say Done! when complete. Then just take the flash drive with the .deb files over to the Ubuntu computer, copy "Packages" to your /home/username, and run the dpkg command.

    Ok, I just successfully downloaded and installed the build-essentials on a VBox here, so it should work! Good luck!

  10. #10
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    Re: Offline Software Installation - Download with Windows

    I tried what you said (thanks for spelling it out). I tried it both on my desktop which has seven on it and my laptop which has ubuntu 10.04 64bit and seven. When I get done using Wassail, I look in the folder where my packages and Wassail both are and the packages file is only about 2kb. So I opened in in ubuntu and all it is is this:

    #!/bin/sh
    wget -c cdrom:[Ubuntu 10.04.3 LTS _Lucid Lynx_ - Release amd64 (20110720.1)]/pool/main/g/gcc-4.4/libstdc++6-4.4-dev_4.4.3-4ubuntu5_amd64.deb
    wget -c cdrom:[Ubuntu 10.04.3 LTS _Lucid Lynx_ - Release amd64 (20110720.1)]/pool/main/g/gcc-4.4/g++-4.4_4.4.3-4ubuntu5_amd64.deb
    wget -c cdrom:[Ubuntu 10.04.3 LTS _Lucid Lynx_ - Release amd64 (20110720.1)]/pool/main/g/gcc-defaults/g++_4.4.3-1ubuntu1_amd64.deb
    wget -c cdrom:[Ubuntu 10.04.3 LTS _Lucid Lynx_ - Release amd64 (20110720.1)]/pool/main/x/xz-utils/xz-utils_4.999.9beta+20091116-1_amd64.deb
    wget -c cdrom:[Ubuntu 10.04.3 LTS _Lucid Lynx_ - Release amd64 (20110720.1)]/pool/main/p/patch/patch_2.6-2ubuntu1_amd64.deb
    wget -c cdrom:[Ubuntu 10.04.3 LTS _Lucid Lynx_ - Release amd64 (20110720.1)]/pool/main/d/dpkg/dpkg-dev_1.15.5.6ubuntu4.5_all.deb
    wget -c cdrom:[Ubuntu 10.04.3 LTS _Lucid Lynx_ - Release amd64 (20110720.1)]/pool/main/b/build-essential/build-essential_11.4build1_amd64.deb
    wget -c cdrom:[Ubuntu 10.04.3 LTS _Lucid Lynx_ - Release amd64 (20110720.1)]/pool/main/f/fakeroot/fakeroot_1.14.4-1ubuntu1_amd64.deb

    I can't find where any .deb files are located. I must be making a mistake somewhere I just don't know where. Thanks

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