nordisk/holger

Serving .deb / .rpm packages — for absolute beginners

Class: idiot. No jargon, nothing assumed. You have a folder of .deb or .rpm files and you want apt / dnf on another machine to install from it — offline, through holger. This spells it out. The grown-up version is deb-rpm-native-metadata-guide.

What you're about to do

.deb files are Linux packages for Debian and Ubuntu. .rpm files are the same idea for Red Hat and Fedora. Normally your machine downloads them from the internet. Holger lets you keep a pile of them inside a network with no internet, and hands them out exactly the way apt and dnf already expect — so the normal install commands just work.

The good news: holger builds the "catalogue" for you automatically. apt and dnf won't install anything until they can read a catalogue (a list of every package and what it needs). You do not have to write that list. Holger opens each .deb / .rpm, reads the real details out of it — what it's called, what it needs to run (its "dependencies"), who made it, a one-line description — and builds the catalogue from that. You just supply the package files.

The whole thing in one breath

Drop your .deb / .rpm files into a holger archive, start holger, and point apt / dnf at it. Holger reads each package and writes the catalogue itself, so the ordinary apt install / dnf install commands work — with no internet.

Step by step

You need a terminal (the black window where you type) and holger built. If holger isn't built yet, do the beginner walk-through in for-idiots first.

1. Gather your packages. Put all your .deb files (or all your .rpm files) in one folder. That's it — no renaming, no special layout.

2. Pack them into a holger archive. Holger stores packages in one sealed file called a .znippy. The holger agent makes it from your folder — the agent-guide shows the one command. You do not need any special "plugin" or option; a plain pile of packages is exactly what holger expects.

3. Tell holger to serve it. Add a few lines to holger's config file (holger.ron) naming your archive as a repository, and start the server. The serve-guide has a first config you can copy.

4. Point your other machine at it.

For Debian / Ubuntu, add one line to the machine's apt sources (the [trusted=yes] tells apt "I trust this, don't ask for a signature" — right for a private offline setup):

deb [trusted=yes] http://your-holger-server:8081/debrepo stable main

then:

apt update
apt install <the-package-you-want>

For Red Hat / Fedora, add a little .repo file pointing at holger (with gpgcheck=0 for the same "it's mine, don't ask" reason), then:

dnf install <the-package-you-want>

That's the whole job. apt / dnf reads holger's auto-built catalogue, downloads the package from your sealed archive, and installs it — no internet involved.

Why this is nicer than it used to be

Older holger could only guess a package's name and version from its filename. It couldn't tell apt what a package needs to run, so complex installs could stall. Now holger looks inside each package and reads the real information, so dependency-heavy installs resolve properly. You don't do anything different — it just works better.

If something doesn't install

• Double-check the URL and port in your apt source / .repo file match how you started holger (the default port is 8081).
• Run apt update again after any change — apt caches the catalogue.
• Holger can't be tricked or crashed by a weird package: if one file is broken it's quietly skipped, the rest still serve. So a failed install is almost always the URL or a missing package in your folder, not holger choking.
• Want a login so not just anyone can use it? See auth-for-idiots.