Building DVD Images Of Ubuntu Repositories

1 Preliminary Note

This tutorial was inspired by an articles I read at http://cargol.net/~ramon/ubuntu-dvd-en. So many thanks to Ramon Acedo (the one who made this HowTo, originally)

The pages are not reachable from some weeks, now. I saved the page to read it off-line. So...

I found it useful. I hope it will be the same for you.

2 Introduction

This howto offers a simple way of creating DVD images of Debian or Ubuntu http/ftp repositories.

Ubuntu doesn't offer DVDs ready to download with its main, universe, multiverse and/or restricted repositories. With the contents of this howto you can do it yourself.

Having the Ubuntu or Debian repositories on DVD can be useful for those users who don't have access to the Internet where they have their Ubuntu installed but have access somewhere else to download the repository and build and burn the DVDs.

3 Building a local mirror

We have to install debmirror:

sudo apt-get install debmirror

Now we get the Ubuntu repositories in a local directory. In the example below we get main, universe and multiverse sections of the repository in the i386 architecture.

debmirror --nosource -m --passive --host=archive.ubuntulinux.org --root=ubuntu/ --method=ftp --progress --dist=dapper --section=main,multiverse,universe --arch=i386 ubuntu/ --ignore-release-gpg

You could change the options below as you prefer:

• --host - the URL of the repository.
• --dist - the distro of your OS (dapper, edgy, sarge, ... ).
• --section - the section you want to mirror locally.
• --arch - the architecture of your box.

4 Separating the archive into DVD-sized directories

The repositories we got are too big (about 30Gb) to burn them to a DVD so we have to separate them into volumes.

The tool debpartial will do it for us.

sudo apt-get install debpartial

We make the directory where the volumes will reside.

mkdir ubuntu-dvd

and we make it to construct the package descriptors to every volume.

debpartial --nosource --dirprefix=ubuntu --section=main,universe,multiverse --dist=dapper --size=DVD ubuntu/ ubuntu-dvd/

Now we have to put the packages into the directories debpartial has just created. The script debcopy which also comes with the debpartial package will do it. The script needs ruby.

sudo apt-get install ruby

If everything is ok...

ruby debcopy ubuntu/ ubuntu-dvd/ubuntu0
ruby debcopy ubuntu/ ubuntu-dvd/ubuntu1
ruby debcopy ubuntu/ ubuntu-dvd/ubuntu2

Where ubuntu/ is the directory with the complete repository created with debmirror and ubuntu-dvd/* are the directories ready to host the new DVD-ready repository.
If we want to make soft links from the complete repository instead of copying the packages we can call debcopy with the option -l:

ruby debcopy -l ubuntu/ ubuntu-dvd/ubuntu0
ruby debcopy -l ubuntu/ ubuntu-dvd/ubuntu1
ruby debcopy -l ubuntu/ ubuntu-dvd/ubuntu2

Now every directory (ubuntu0, ubuntu1 and ubuntu2) fits on one DVD.

5 Making iso images

To get the directories ubuntu0, ubuntu1, ubuntu2 into an iso image ready to burn we can use mkisofs:

mkisofs -f -J -r -o ubuntu-dvd-0.iso ubuntu-dvd/ubuntu0
mkisofs -f -J -r -o ubuntu-dvd-1.iso ubuntu-dvd/ubuntu1
mkisofs -f -J -r -o ubuntu-dvd-2.iso ubuntu-dvd/ubuntu2

Now you can burn the iso images or mount them. Add them to the /etc/apt/source.list with the command:

sudo apt-cdrom add

Now we can verify the new repositories...

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade

... and, if I explain in the right way, you should have your box upgraded.

6 About the script 'debcopy'

I heard about someone who can not find the script debcopy, above described.
In that case, create a new file called debcopy where you want:

gedit /your_path_to/debcopy

and copy the lines below inside it:

#!/usr/bin/ruby
#
# debcopy - Debian Packages/Sources partial copy tool
#
# Usage: debcopy [-l]  
#
#  where  is a top directory of a debian archive,
#  and  is a top directory of a new debian partial archive.
#
#  debcopy searches all Packages.gz and Sources.gz under /dists
#  and copies all files listed in the Packages.gz and Sources.gz
#  files into  from . -l creates symbolic links
#  instead of copying files.
#
# Copyright (C) 2002  Masato Taruishi 
#
#  This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
#  it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
#  the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or
#  (at your option) any later version.
#
#  This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
#  but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
#  MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
#  GNU General Public License for more details.
#
#  You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License with
#  the Debian GNU/Linux distribution in file /usr/share/common-licenses/GPL;
#  if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place,
#  Suite 330, Boston, MA  02111-1307  USA
#
require 'getoptlong'
require 'zlib'
require 'ftools'
$link = false
def usage
  $stderr.puts "Usage: #{__FILE__} [-l]  "
   exit 1
end
def each (file, &block)
  fin = Zlib::GzipReader.open(file)
  fin.each do |line|
    yield line
  end
  fin.close
end
def each_file (file, &block)
  each(file) do |line|
    if /Filename: (.*)/ =~ line
      yield $1
    end
  end
end
def each_sourcefile (file, &block)
  dir = nil
  each(file) do |line|
    case line
    when /^Directory: (.*)$/
      dir = $1
    when /^ \S+ \d+ (\S+)$/
      yield dir + "/" + $1
    end
  end
end
def calc_relpath (source, dest)
  pwd = Dir::pwd
  Dir::chdir source
  source = Dir::pwd
  Dir::chdir pwd
  Dir::chdir dest
  dest = Dir::pwd
  Dir::chdir pwd
  src_ary = source.split("/")
  src_ary.shift
  dest_ary = dest.split("/")
  dest_ary.shift
  return dest if src_ary[0] != dest_ary[0]
  src_ary.clone.each_index do |i|
    break if src_ary[0] != dest_ary[0]
    src_ary.shift
    dest_ary.shift
  end
  src_ary.size.times do |i|
    dest_ary.unshift("..")
  end
  dest_ary.join("/")
end
def do_copy(path)
  if $link
    pwd=calc_relpath(File.dirname($dest_dir + "/" + path), $source_dir)
    File.symlink(pwd + "/" + path, $dest_dir + "/" + path)
  else
    File.copy($source_dir + "/" + path, $dest_dir + "/" + path)
  end
end
def copy(path)
  s=$source_dir + "/" + path
  d=$dest_dir + "/" + path
  if FileTest.exist?(d)
    $stats["ignore"] += 1
    return
  end
  if FileTest.exist?(s)
    File.mkpath(File.dirname(d))
    do_copy(path)
    $stats["copy"] += 1
  else
    $stats["notfound"] += 1
    $stderr.puts s + " not found."
  end
end
opts = GetoptLong.new(["--symlink", "-l", GetoptLong::NO_ARGUMENT],
		      ["--help", "-h", GetoptLong::NO_ARGUMENT])
opts.each do |opt,arg|
  case opt
  when "--symlink"
    $link = true
  when "--help"
    usage
  end
end
usage if ARGV.size != 2
$source_dir = ARGV.shift
$dest_dir = ARGV.shift
if $link
  $source_dir = Dir::pwd + "/" + $source_dir unless $source_dir =~ /\A\//
  $dest_dir = Dir::pwd + "/" + $dest_dir unless $dest_dir =~ /\A\//
end
$stats = {}
$stats["ignore"] = 0
$stats["copy"] = 0
$stats["notfound"] = 0
open("|find #{$dest_dir}/dists -name Packages.gz") do |o|
  o.each_line do |file|
    file.chomp!
    print "Processing #{file}... "
    $stdout.flush
    each_file(file) do |path|
      copy(path)
    end
    puts "done"
  end
end
open("|find #{$dest_dir}/dists -name Sources.gz") do |o|
  o.each_line do |file|
    file.chomp!
    print "Processing #{file}... "
    $stdout.flush
    each_sourcefile(file.chomp) do |path|
      copy(path)
    end
    puts "done"
  end
end
puts "Number of Copied Files: " + $stats["copy"].to_s
puts "Number of Ignored Files: " + $stats["ignore"].to_s
puts "Number of Non-existence File: " + $stats["notfound"].to_s