On Thu, 9 Aug 2018, gregrwm wrote:

> Mike Miller wrote:
>> Do you mean that if the .deb files are all copied into
>> /var/cache/apt/archives and I run this command...
>>
>> sudo apt install dkms
>>
>> ...then it will find and install that package and dependencies from the 
>> files without trying to look to the internet repositories?
>
>
> that is what i meant, tho on second thought apt-get may still want the 
> network to check the metadata, and i'm not sure --no-download will help, 
> tho you may as well try.  the help.ubuntu.com topic "Installing packages 
> without an Internet connection" makes it look a bit harder.  i suppose 
> you still might be able to just fool apt-get by copying in the metadata 
> too, and running it before the metadata expires.

I think I can put all the .deb files in a directory (say, 
package-directory) and then run this command:

sudo dpkg -iR --no-force-depends package-directory

-i install
-R recursive (will do everything in the directory
--no-force-things where "things" is "depends" turns off dependency checking

That seems like the right plan.  All the dependencies are supposedly taken 
care of, so no checking is needed.

I'll let you know what happens!

Mike