GNU/Linux

If you use Gentoo on a computer that doesn’t has a fast Internet connection, you can still update it or install new applications on it, by downloading files on a different system that has a fast Internet connection and then copying them to your machine using media like CD, DVD or a USB Pen Drive. The complete procedure is given below.

1. Download the following shell script and copy it to the home directory of the local machine:
   shotsync.sh
   If the browser displays the contents of the file, use File->Save As… menu item to save the file. Or right-click on the link and select “Save Target/Link as…” from the context menu.
   We’ll need this script in Step 4.
2. Also download the following file on the machine with fast Internet connection:
   dist-grabber.py

   Make the file executable and place it in a directory that is in the system PATH.

   sh# chmod +x distfile-grabber.py
   sh# mv distfile-grabber.py /usr/bin

   We’ll need this script file in Step 6.

3. On the machine that has a fast Internet connection, download the latest snapshot of the portage tree from:
   Gentoo Portage Snapshots

   Let’s call this file ‘snapshot.tar.bzip’.

4. Copy this file in the home directory of the local machine. From the home directory on the local machine, run the following command:
   sh# shotsync.sh snapshot.tar.bzip

   (we had downloaded the shotsync.sh file in Step 1)

5. On the local machine, create a list of files to be downloaded on the other machine using the following command:
   sh# emerge -uDp –fetchonly world 2> /tmp/distfiles.txt

   (that’s two hyphens(-) for ‘fetchonly’ option)

   (replace ‘world’ with a package name if you don’t want to do a complete upgrade: sh# emerge -uDp –fetchonly lynx 2> /tmp/distfiles.txt )

6. Copy the file generated in the above step(distfile.txt) to the machine with good Internet connection. Run the following command to download all the packages specified in the distfile.txt file:
   sh# distfile-grabber distfiles.txt

   (we had downloaded distfile-grabber.py script in Step 2)

7. Copy all the above downloaded files into the /usr/portage/distfiles directory of the local machine. Then perform the final installation using the following command:
   sh# emerge -uD world

   (If you had used a package name in Step 5, use the same here too: sh# emerge -uD lynx)

Repeat Steps 3-7 at regular intervals to keep your Gentoo system updated. If you only want to install applications without doing a complete update of the portage tree(eg. its already updated), you can just follow Steps 5-7 by replacing ‘world’ with the name of the package.

Whenever you need to copy a file from local machine to the machine with fast Internet connection or vice versa, you can use any suitable media like CD, DVD, USB Pen Drive, Portable Hard disk etc.

More info: Gentoo Wiki
All the scripts mentioned in this post are taken from this source.

NOTE 1:
If the machine with fast Internet connection uses the Windows operating system, you can still use the dist-grabber.py script to download the packages, provided you have Python installed on that system(and is in the environment path). If you instead have Perl installed on the system, you can make use of the following perl script for the same job:
dist-grabber.pl

NOTE 2:
If you would rather use wget to download the package files, then get the required URLs, convert the URL list to wget format & then get the package files:

(that’s two hyphens(-) for ‘pretend’ and ‘fetchonly’ options)

I still carry the habit of storing all the large files in my Windows partitions from my bad old Windows days. That allows me to plug any kind of device into the computer and copy the files to/from it. Gnu/Linux supports all kinds of DVD writers and Pen drives too, but my friends sometimes carry such wierd devices(and mp3 players) that they can be connected only to a computer using the Windows operating system. Accessing files in the Windows OS from a GNU/Linux partition is a time consuming and inefficient process – I do it using the excellent tool called Explore2FS, but its not an ideal tool for copying large amounts of files and directories. So it suits me well: store the files on the Windows partitions and access them easily from both Windows and GNU/Linux(by using a simple mount command).

When I discovered that my old Debian Sarge installation was not detecting the USB port for some reason and that its DVD-ROM has also died upon me, my only way to transfer some files to it was through the LAN. The files were contained in an ISO file on a Windows NTFS partition on a different machine. Below is the description of what I had to do to make the ISO file contents available to my USB-less, DVD-less Debian system.

I use Gentoo as my primary operating system on my personal desktop. The first job for me was to mount the local Windows partition(hda7) that contained the needed ISO file in the Gentoo filesystem.

The ISO file was visible. I tried to export the /mnt/win_d directory using NFS and then tried to mount the ISO file on the Debian system, but it didn’t work out that way for me. Not in a mood to loose too much time over it, I mounted the ISO file on my Gentoo System itself and then exported this mounted directory:

All the files contained in the ISO file were visible. The next job is to install the NFS server and the related tools if they are already not available, and then export the /mnt/myiso directory using it.

Put the following line /etc/exports:

/mnt/myiso 192.168.0.0/255.255.255.0(async, no_subtree_check, ro, no_squash_root)

I have specified a range of IP addresses to export the directory to all the machines within the subnet. Only one IP address or a different IP address range can also specified there. Note that there should be NO space between the IP address/IP address range and the opening paranthesis that follows it. To learn more about the different options and their meanings that can be specified in the line, head on to this.

Start the nfs and portmap daemons and add them to the default runlevel(so that they start automatically at the boot time).

If you ever make changes to the /etc/exportfs file, then export all your changes using:

The last command shows you all the directories that are currently exported.

Now go to the other machine(Debian in my case) and use a simple mount command to access the exported directory.

You should see all the files from the exported directory. The IP address above is of the host system(Gentoo in my case) which is running the nfs daemon. Now you can use the /mnt/remote directory as any other directory on the local gnu/linux system. If the exported directory were a linux partition or a Windows FAT partition, then the write options could also have been ebabled by using the “rw” option in the /etc/exportfs file in place of the “ro” option. The following line can be added to the /etc/fstab file to mount this directory automatically at the boot time:

192.168.0.7:/mnt/myiso /mnt/remote nfs ro 0 0

The IP address, as above, is of the host system. You may be interested in this: NFS in Gentoo