[ale] Getting additional programs on Ubuntu PCs w/o Internet connection

[brian at polibyte.com (Brian Pitts)]

On Tue, 2008-10-14 at 23:15 -0400, Daniel Howard wrote:
> Folks, I just did an Ubuntu installfest for a bunch of families at a 
> local elementary school, and we ran out of time when it came to 
> installing additional programs on Ubuntu using the school's Internet 
> feed,

A tip for doing installs when bandwidth is scarce:

On your machine, run a caching proxy server like apt-cacher-ng [0].

On the machines being set up, tell Synaptic to use the proxy
(Settings->Preferences->Network->HTTP Proxy) before doing any updates or
installing new packages. After one machine has finished
updating/installing, the process will go much faster for the others
since packages will no longer have to be downloaded from the Internet.
Just don't forget to disable the proxy in Synaptic before sending the
machines home.

I may give a talk on this and other mass installation / imaging tips
I've picked up at Barcamp [1] this weekend if there's any interest (it's
my first trip to Atlanta in a while, I'm excited!).

[0] http://www.unix-ag.uni-kl.de/~bloch/acng/
[1] http://www.barcampatlanta.com/

-Brian