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I have a rather unusual problem: I need to be able to download Ubuntu software on an online machine, burn it on a disk, and install it on an offline machine. The software download needs to include all dependencies (and the dependencies' dependencies, and so on) as the offline machine might not have them. In addition, the two machines might not run the same version of Ubuntu (for instance, the online machine might be running version 12 and the offline machine might be running version 13). Also, they might not have the same architecture (one might be 32 bit and the other might be 64 bit). The method of downloading and installing the software could be anything - a python script, a batch script, a program, an existing software, whatever. Any help with this issue would be most appreciated (even hints and guesses as to the right direction).

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A possible way is to download and install everything on an online computer (including your software) and build out the hard disc, and thus install this hard disc on your offline computer (mind you you could have issues with certain drivers needed to have maximum performance; this you can check by running a live session on your offline computer ;) )

Another way is to install everything you need on an online computer and build an ISO with remastersys and thus burn a DVD (a CD-R will be to small) and install your software on this offline computer.

For the 32-64 bits problem; you should know what your offline computer has as specifications; it might be possible that this machine isn't capable to run Ubuntu (e.g. an older XP-computer) but that you need to run and install Xubuntu , so I'd say that you burn with remastersys 2 versions (Xubuntu and Ubuntu) so you won't have issuses with that offline computer.

I hope this will turn out the right way for you. A side note: running Ubuntu without internet is not a very good thought; there are constant updates for improving the performance of Ubuntu.

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Look at this instruction. I will also point out some key commands as expirienced users recommend.

  1. Install debmirror:

    sudo apt-get install debmirror liblockfile-simple-perl liblog-agent-perl ruby mkisofs dpkg-dev libdigest-sha1-perl libruby libzlib-ruby
    
  2. Download those files you want:

    debmirror --nosource -m --passive --host=archive.ubuntu.com --root=ubuntu/ --method=http --progress --dist=precise,precise-security,precise-updates,precise-backports, --section=main,restricted,universe,multiverse --arch=i386,amd64 ~/UbuntuRepos --ignore-release-gpg
    
  3. Divide into DVD-sizes portions.

    debpartial --nosource --dirprefix=ubuntu --section=main,restricted,universe,multiverse --dist=precise,precise-security,precise-updates,precise-backports --size=DVD ~/UbuntuRepos ~/UbuntuDVDs
    
  4. Burn them to DVDs.

But rather then using DVD, I prefer to use mobile HDD, which is far more convenient. I made such entries in my sources.list file for my mobile repos:

# deb file:/media/Elements/UbuntuMirror1/Ubuntu precise main restricted universe multiverse
# deb file:/media/Elements/UbuntuMirror1/Ubuntu precise-updates main restricted universe multiverse
# deb file:/media/Elements/UbuntuMirror1/Ubuntu precise-backports main restricted universe multiverse
# deb file:/media/Elements/UbuntuMirror1/Ubuntu precise-security main restricted universe multiverse

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