GNU/Linux Desktop Survival Guide by Graham Williams
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Download Debian Packages

Now download from a local server the actual packages that will make up the contents of the CD-ROM:

$ ./make-pseudo-image binary-i386-1.list ftp://ftp.au.debian.org/debian

This takes quite a while! The end product is a file called pseudo-image. All the other pseudo-image* files can be removed (they're used to keep track of where things were up to in case the download is interrupted).

This download is called the pseudo image because it's an approximation of the real image! It's pretty close, but not yet guaranteed perfect. It is a simple process to now turn it into an official image:

$ mv pseudo-image binary-i386-1.iso
$ rsync --verbose --progress --stats --block-size=8192 \
  mirror.aarnet.edu.au::debian-cd/2.1_r4/i386/binary-i386-1.iso .

This uses rsync to synchronise your CD-ROM image with the official one. When this is complete you can burn this CD-ROM image directly to CD-ROM. Most CD-ROM burning software supports burning iso images directly.

Some other useful rsync commands allow you to hunt around the directory structure of an rsync server. Some useful commands are:

List contents of the rsync server's root directory

$ rsync mirror.aarnet.edu.au::

List the contents of another directory

$ rsync --dry-run mirror.aarnet.edu.au::debian-cd/2.2_rev0/*