I've been looking around for a way to update an offline fedora box but haven't found anything. I only have a Windows computer connected to the Internet. I noticed that my yum config is pointed to http://download.fedoraproject.org/pub/fedora/linux/updates/14/i386. Is there a way I can download a list of packages and then those packages manually but still use yum?
I've seen ways to do this with a second linux box that has Internet access, but I don't have that.
Go to http://mirrors.fedoraproject.org/publiclist/Fedora/14/ and choose a mirror near you.
Go to updates/14/i386/ and download everything using your favourite download manager/tool.
Copy everything to some media (e.g. USB key) and from that key to your Fedora 14 machine. For example you can make a /var/lib/yum/repo/F14_updates directory on your box.
Run createrepo /path/to/your/downloaded/rpms.
Add new repository description in /etc/yum.repos.d. Use some existing file as a template. The only change is the path: instead of http://... use file:///path/to/your/downloaded/rpms. Make sure to enable the repository.
Disable all other repositories -- you don't have access to them anyhow, so they won't help you.
Run yum update and enjoy your freshly updated system.
You could run a virtual machine (say using VirtualBox) on your Windows machine and do the downloading there by calling yum update. You can then copy the downloaded files there to your offline Fedora box. I'm not familiar with how yum does it, but usually these package managers have a small list of files where they cache information.
yum update? You can probably copy the downloaded files there to your offline Fedora box. I'm not familar with how yum does it, but usually these package managers have a small list of files where they cache information. – Faheem Mitha May 17 '11 at 19:39