Manage Debian or Ubuntu based systems offline using Keryx

Written on November 6th, 2010 at 03:20 am by shredder12

I still remember how much labor I did in order to get Ubuntu running on my home desktop which was supposed to stay offline. As you might have guessed, the whole trouble was with the post-installation part - the updates, installation of other useful packages etc. Because of no Internet connectivity I had to carry the computer to my friend's house and get everything done. Keryx is something I could have really used then. Its usefulness could be easily understood from the fact that I would have only carried a USB drive then, rather than a whole computer .

What is keryx anyway?

Well folks, this tool was created by a Southern Illinois University computer science student Chris Oliver. This tool aims to fix the problem of offline system management which many of us might have witnessed. Unlike a whole computer, you can easily carry it around in a pendrive.

How does Keryx work?

It works on a project/profile based policy. It creates a profile of an offline system in the form of a project and then instead of updating that actual system you will be emulating the update by using the information from its project, on an online system. Now, in the end you have all the packages, with resolved dependencies, on a pendrive. Just plug it into your offline system and install them.

P.S. - Since, Keryx is built on wxPython, its cross-platform. So, not just Linux, your online system could be running Windows and Mac too.

There is a great tutorial available here. The tool has its first version released a while ago, so don't panic if things don't work perfectly. But do report bugs or feature requests, if any, because something like Keryx is really needed to help manage offline systems easily.

As such this project is only for Debian or Ubuntu based systems. Probably it will be available for multiple package managers in future. Once again, kudos to Chris for coming up with this brilliant tool.

3 Comments

Kint (not verified)

November 6th, 2010 05:40 pm

CPU stands for Central Processing Unit and USB stands for Universal Serial Bus. I'm pretty sure you meant "computer" instead of CPU, and "USB drive" instead of USB.

shredder12

November 6th, 2010 10:29 pm

I guess I killed the terminology here . Corrected and thanks for pointing it out :)

fral (not verified)

November 6th, 2010 08:52 pm

This is a really great tool, i hope this can make his way to the other distros and not just the debian based ones. By the way, do you know about Sushi, huh?, is a tool similar to this one but is used to get the packages and its dependencies to later be installed in an offline linux (be it based on rpm or deb), i mean, is not for updates but for single packages installations.