Mass installation of packages in Debian

[biniman]

Hi all,
I have debian.4.0.r6.i386 in my system. The system only used CD1 out of the 21 CDs during installation. I have used the package manager to scan all the CDs. I have observed that the man pages provide scanty information. I am beginning to suspect (perhaps erroneously) that the man pages were not fully installed. Consodering other issues that I am having with the installation, I would like to know the commands to use or the steps to follow to install all the packages in all 21 CDs.

Thanks,

biniman

[HROAdmin26]

Why would you want to do that? Why not read and understand what is on all of these CD's and then decide what you want to install?

Debian FAQ

Furthermore, in most cases it is not necessary to download all of the images for your architecture. The packages are sorted by popularity: The first CD/DVD contains the installation system and the most popular packages. The second one contains slightly less popular ones, the third one even less popular ones, etc. You will probably only need the first DVD (or the first two CDs) unless you have very special requirements. (And in case you happen to need a package later on which is not on one of the CDs/DVDs you downloaded, you can always install that package directly from the Internet.)

Debian - List contents of every CD

** In my typical usage, I use only CD1 to install. Then I *comment out* the CD source in the apt list and just pull packages from online when I need to install them.

[biniman]

I want all the packages installed so that they would be readily available when ever the system needs then. For example, I could not install Adobe Flash player because the system cannot find some glibc files. I do not know what package the system is going to look for next, so I might as well install everything regardless of whether they will be needed later or never.

biniman

[HROAdmin26]

That's why you have a PACKAGE MANAGER that resolves dependencies for you. In Debian this is apt. There are numerous apps that provide GUI front-ends to using apt as well.

How to use APT