On Sun, 5 Apr 2020 18:18:29 -0700 stan via users users@lists.fedoraproject.org wrote:
On Sun, 5 Apr 2020 18:10:00 -0700 stan upaitag@zoho.com wrote:
On Sun, 5 Apr 2020 13:34:34 -0700 Geoffrey Leach geoff@hughes.net wrote:
My internet service comes over a satellite, and with it a relatively small monthly download allowance. Which motivates the following question.
Once I have installed a new disto and downloaded the RPMs that I use, is there a procedure by which I could gather together everything that I have added, so that I could transfer the files (RPMs, or whatever) to a local system, without resorting to the internet? (Or, at least, to a significant amount!)
If the two systems are the same version of fedora (or even different versions if they use the same dnf layout), you can put keepcache=1 in /etc/dnf/dnf.conf to keep the rpms after they are installed. See the man page for dnf.conf for an explanation. Those rpms are kept in directories like /var/cache/dnf/fedora-[hash]/packages/, with a directory for each file in /etc/yum.repos.d. You can then copy them to the other machine's similar directory, and they will reside there until you decide to remove them.
If the cache gets too full with the keepcache option, you can go into the directory and remove the packages individually, or you can run dnf clean packages to remove them from every cache.
But, I have to wonder why you are doing this. Unless you are updating another machine, and want to save the bandwidth from happening twice, once the packages are installed, you should never need them again on the same machine. That's why the default for keepcache is 0, so that cleanup occurs whenever a successful update happens.
This is a lot simpler than setting up a local repository.
I forgot to say that the rpms are signed, so if you want to use them on an older system, that system will need to have its fedora-gpg-keys package, and probably its fedora-repos package, updated to at least the version of the system that installed them. Usually simple dnf update will work for version n-1, but beyond that you will have to use --force with rpm, or turn off gpg checking in dnf, because the system dnf won't have the keys to check the updates.
Saving bandwidth is the goal.
I'll be updating three systems with different hardware to the same Fedora version. Sounds like keepcache is exactly what I need.
Thanks.