Need help with Debian package management

[bill-CIZd1d4GmLheoWH0uzbU5w at public.gmane.org (Bill Horne)]

Thanks for reading this. I need help to solve a problem with Debian 
packages.

I used Aptitude to add the GNU compiler to a new Debian Etch install. I 
pushed the wrong button, because it took a day to download 5GB worth of 
archives, and it installed a lot of kernels I can't use and games I 
don't want, etc.

I think I'll have to reinstall, since the operation for which I need the 
compiler (adding Intel drivers for the 82865G chipset) won't work with 
the current setup.

I copied the /var/cache/apt/archives directory to another machine and 
modified the sources.list file on the target, but doing apt-get update 
produces this result:

Get:8 ftp://192.168.10.90 etch/main Packages
Err ftp://192.168.10.90 etch/main Packages
  Unable to fetch file, server said 
'/var/cache/apt/archives/dists/etch/main/binary-i386/Packages.gz: No 
such file or directory.  '
Get:9 ftp://192.168.10.90 etch/main Sources
Err ftp://192.168.10.90 etch/main Sources
  Unable to fetch file, server said 
'/var/cache/apt/archives/dists/etch/main/source/Sources.gz: No such file 
or directory.  '
Fetched 2B in 3s (1B/s)
Failed to fetch 
ftp://192.168.10.90/var/cache/apt/archives/dists/etch/main/binary-i386/Packages.gz  
Unable to fetch file, server said 
'/var/cache/apt/archives/dists/etch/main/binary-i386/Packages.gz:
       No such file or directory.  '
Failed to fetch 
ftp://192.168.10.90/var/cache/apt/archives/dists/etch/main/source/Sources.gz  
Unable to fetch file, server said 
'/var/cache/apt/archives/dists/etch/main/source/Sources.gz:
      No such file or directory.  '
Reading package lists... Done
W: Couldn't stat source package list ftp://192.168.10.90 etch/main 
Packages 
(/var/lib/apt/lists/192.168.10.90_var_cache_apt_archives_dists_etch_main_binary-i386_Packages) 
- stat (2
     No such file or directory)
W: You may want to run apt-get update to correct these problems
E: Some index files failed to download, they have been ignored, or old 
ones used instead.

Now, the question: is it worth my time to construct a Debian archive of 
the packages that I downloaded?

All suggestions welcome. I appreciate your time.

Bill

-- 
E. William Horne
William Warren Consulting
Computer & Network Installations and Service
781-784-7287