The most common method
that is used to carry out installation of any sort of additional packages in
Ubuntu is the apt-get. The apt-get
following the name of the software package you specified to install, it
searches for that particular software from the Internet and if found, apt-get
downloads and installs it on your system. But there is a tool which allows you
to install the download packages on your system without downloading. The tool
named, APTonCd, which is a graphical
tool that allows you to create one or more CDs or DVDs of all the packages that
you’ve downloaded via apt-get and thus creates a removal repository that you
can use on other computers with a single action. The main advantage of APTonCD
is that you don’t have to download the packages again if you are doing a fresh
installation on your or other systems. You can restore the previously installed
programs easily. Let’s see how we can do this in Ubuntu.
Installation:First you have to install APTonCD.
You can install APTonCD from the Ubuntu Software Center.
Or you can install it
through your terminal. Run the following command:
sudo apt-get install aptoncd
Fig2.Install
APTonCD through terminal
Fig3.Launch
APTonCD from Dash
Backing
up Packages:
After you launch it, you
can see the following window. Click “Create” button to create a disc with your
downloaded, cached deb packages on it. This copies packages from your APT cache
located in the /var/cache/apt/archives/directory to the disc.
Fig4.Starting
screen to Create the backup.
Next step is to select the
packages which you would like to write to the disk. By default it selects all
the packages but you can deselect them if you don’t want those packages to be
written on the disc. And also you can add some additional packages you want by
clicking the Add button.
After you get a Window
that allows you to select a CD or DVD image, give it a name and the location
for the ISO image file, and select optionally create a meta-package.
Fig6.Specifying the installation disc properties.
Fig8.Scanning the packages.
Once the image is created,
you can have APTonCD launch a disc-burning application, Such as Brasero, to
burn it to a disc immediately. You can burn the ISO image later also. And if
you don’t have a disc drive, then there is nothing to worry, you can also save
the ISO image as a file and you can transport it using a USB drive between
computers.
Installing
All Packages:
If you burnt the image to
disc, you can insert it into your drive by opening it in a file manager window,
and double-click the package named ”aptoncd-metapackage” to install it. This
will install all packages available on the disc. The package will not be
present if you didn’t have APTonCD create a meta-package.
If you have not burn into
a disc and you have just an ISO image then you can mount it as a disc and
install the packages from it.
Adding
a Disc as a Repository:
The File -> Add CD/DVD
option in APTonCD adds the disc to APT as a software source. The disc will be
used as a repository in APT, so you can install packages from it using
Synaptic, apt-get, or any other package management tools, even if you’re
offline.
Fig11.Adding
CD or DVD as APT source.
Restoring
Packages to Cache:
Before you click on the
Load Button on the restore screen, you have to install the hal package on your
system. To do so, run the following command:
sudo apt-get install hal
Fig12.Installing
the hal packages.
Restart APTonCD after
running this command and you’ll be able to restore packages by Restore button.
You can restore packages to any of your system.
Fig13.Load
the packages.
Use the Load button on the
Restore screen to specify a disc drive or ISO image file.
Fig14.Selecting
an ISO image.
