Download 64bit packages in a 32bit system

Question

I need to download some packages to install in my other machine which doesn't have internet access, and has a 64-bit architecture.

Since this machine which has internet connection is 32-bit, it only downloads 32-bit packages with apt-get.

I want to know if it is possible to:

1. download 64 bit packages;
2. download those which are already present.

Alternatively, is it possible to get the url for these packages in a automatic way?

Answer 1

You can use aptitude (to be installed):

sudo aptitude -o APT::Architecture="amd64" update
aptitude -o APT::Architecture="amd64" download package-name

(after that, remember to do an apt-get update without -o option, to restore correct i386 information).

It is also possible to show packages URLs with

apt-get --print-uris install package-name

but this only works for non inistalled packages. For 64 bits packages, change the suffix _i386.deb with _amd64.deb.

Alternatively,

apt-cache --no-all-versions show package-name | grep ^Filename

shows URL but without the leading server information. Server information can be obtained from:

apt-cache --no-all-versions policy package-name | 
    grep -A2 '^  [^ ]' | tail -1 | awk '{ print $2 }'