Download the Debian package powershell_6.0.2-1.ubuntu.17.10_amd64.deb. Arch support is. # Download & Install prerequisites sudo apt-get.

A script for converting .deb packages into Arch Linux packages, focused on accuracy

How do I install a.deb file via the command line? Command-line software-installation dpkg deb. You can run sudo apt-get install -f to download the missing dependencies and configure everything. For command-line run sudo gdebi package.deb> to install a single deb file. Share improve this answer. How to install a deb file. It will automatically download its dependencies. Install gdebi and open your.deb. It will install your.deb package with all its.

Q: What 'debtap' stands for?

A: DEB To Arch (Linux) Package

Q: Isn't better to download an official package or write a PKGBUILD in case I need to compile a package or convert a .deb package to an Arch Linux package?

A: Sure it is, and I truely encourage you to do so. Debtap was written to create packages that either cannot be compiled (closed source packages) or cannot be built from AUR for various reasons (error during compiling or unavailable files), as a quick 'n' dirty solution and an extra option for creating Arch Linux packages for Arch Linux users.

Q: So debtap will help me only in case I need to convert specific .deb packages to Arch Linux packages?

A: No. In case you need to write a new PKGBUILD for a package that already exists in the Debian/Ubuntu distributions, using parameter -p or -P it can generate a PKGBUILD and then edit it as you wish.

Q: What are the minimum requirements to run this script?

A: You need to have installed these dependencies: bash, binutils (provides ar utility for extracting .deb package and readelf), pkgfile and fakeroot.You must run at least once (preferably recently) debtap -u to create/update pkgfile and debtap database (you do this with root privileges).

Q: Debtap needs a lot of time to convert a package. So, why this is happening?

A: Like I said, debtap is focused on accuracy. It won't just unpack a .deb package and then repackage its data to an Arch Linux package, ignoring metadata. Depending on the speed of your processor and the package itself, conversion can take from a few seconds to several minutes.

Q: During conversion I get several warning messages, why?

A: Debtap cannot be 100% accurate for several reasons, the main reason for this is the complexity of packages names. If you want to check the freshly generated .PKGINFO and .INSTALL (this is optional file) metadata files or even fix the untranslated packages names inside .PKGINFO, debtap offers you the option to edit these files before compressing the final package.

Q: How do I use debtap?

A: The syntax is quite simple actually: debtap [options] package_filenameFor example: debtap world-of-goo-demo_1.0_i386.deb

Any recommendations or questions for debtap are welcomed!

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• 1Normal Method: Pacman
  • 1.2A slightly contrived example
  • 1.3Restoring online sources

Normal Method: Pacman

This method is based on byte's post from this thread.

Download the package databases on a computer with internet access and transfer them to your computer. If needed, change MIRROR to any mirror from the mirror status list.

Following steps will make sure you are working with up-to-date package lists, as if you ran pacman -Sy.

After transferring the *.db files to the offline PC, do the following:

To update a New Arch Linux base system after installation you may enter

Now open that textfile with an editor and delete all lines that are not URLs.Next, bring that list with you to a place where you have internet and either download the listed packages manually or run wget in an empty directory:

Take all the *.pkg.tar.gz files back home, put them in /var/cache/pacman/pkg and finally run

A simple example

This is a simple way to install a package you have downloaded:

This is how to install several packages you have installed into a directory

A slightly contrived example

Scenario: you have two Arch Linux machines, 'Al' (with internet connection) and 'Bob' (without internet connection), and you need to install some NVIDIA packages and their dependencies on 'Bob'. In this example, the wanted packages are nvidia, nvidia-utils, and xf86-video-nouveau, but you want to use a dedicated directory instead of /var/cache/pacman/pkg/ and a dedicated repository called nvidia (instead of the usual core, extra etc...)

Generate a list of packages to download

This can be done on any Arch Linux machine which has up-to-date repository data bases (see above for links to database files); to create the list of links to the required packages, use:

The file nvidia.list will contain links to the listed packages and any others which they depend on which are not already installed on 'Al'. Unless you have cleared your cache the packages you have installed will be in your cache location. You can check /etc/pacman.conf for the location. It is probably something like /var/cache/pacman/pkg/.

Download/copy the packages and their dependencies

Obviously this requires an internet connection, so on 'Al' create a directory called /path/to/nvidia for the files and run:

Then copy the dependencies you have already installed from the cache. Either find them manually by browsing https://www.archlinux.org/packages/ or if the total size of all your packages is not too large just copy them all

Create a repository database just for these packages

This can be done on either 'Al' or 'Bob' using the repo-add command which comes with pacman (from version 3?); first, change to the /path/to/nvidia directory where the packages were downloaded, then create database file called nvidia.db.tar.gz:

Transfer the packages

Now all the packages have been downloaded, you do not need 'Al' anymore. Copy the contents of /path/to/nvidia to a the temporary NVIDIA packages cache directory on 'Bob'. In this example, this folder is called /home/me/nvidia:

Next, pacman must be made aware of this new repository of packages. First copy your current pacman.conf:

Now in /etc/pacman.conf make sure that your SigLevel is set to Never as your repository will not provide signatures

and add the following lines at the bottom of pacman.conf:

You may also need to comment out the other repositories so stale defaults do not cause failed attempts to download from onlineNow, instruct pacman to synchronize with the dedicated NVIDIA repository we created:

This command finds the nvidia.db.tar.gz file in /home/me/nvidia and expands it to /var/lib/pacman/sync/nvidia to create a database of packages contained in the NVIDIA repository.

Install the packages

Finally install the packages:

Restoring online sources

Should Bob ever be put online we can restore access to the online sources by replacing /etc/pacman.conf with the previously created /etc/pacman.conf.old.

Links and sources

Compiled from the forums, with thanks to Heller_Barbe and byte