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The company just gave us all a new virtual machine for development porpoises.

It runs Arch Linux, which nobody here has experience of.

The VM has no internet access, but we can side load files by dowloading them on the Windows host PC and placing them in a directory which is shared with the VM.

How can I serach for suitable packages from Windows, then install them from the command line in Arch Linux?

I am specifically interested in Tux Commander and Search Monkey, but a generic answer will also help.

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What a sad thing having a VM without internet access :( I think that you should talk to your boss and tell him that without internet access you can't properly update your linux distro, and this can lead to potential security issues.

Anyway, you can browse the Arch Linux official package list from here: https://www.archlinux.org/packages/

You can download a package by clicking on its name and then click to "download from mirror". Then install with this command:

pacman -U yourpkgname.tar.xz
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  • That worked a treat. Technically, I could be sacked for doing that. The reason the company does not want us updating the VM is they they don't want them getting out of synch, so that software developed on one coder's VM might not work on another's. You can see their point (but not for Tux Commander ;-)
    – Mawg says reinstate Monica
    Apr 21, 2016 at 12:31
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    There are better ways of maintain sync between VMs. Please at least consider using the free opensource software called Vagrant.
    – Luca D'Amico
    Apr 21, 2016 at 14:14
  • Company IT policy is set by a department in a city far away. Nothing can be done to change it :-( Let's put it this way - last week our team were the first to get the new Windows 7 PCs. The 20k+ other employees are still on XP "for security reasons". Do you think that I can change policy? :-/
    – Mawg says reinstate Monica
    Apr 21, 2016 at 15:02
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    I understand, nothing personal of course :) My reply was made just to let you know that IMHO there are better ways to handle these situations.
    – Luca D'Amico
    Apr 21, 2016 at 15:04

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