.nbm files for offline install

Hi everyone!

I need to install SNAP on ~10 computers next week but the Internet connection might not be very good. For SNAP itself, I have the .exe on a USB that I will just copy and install on each machine, but for the installation of the plugins…I am wondering if there is some way to download the .nbm files (the most recent, updated ones) ahead of time and copy them over on USB.

For sen2cor, I do have the standalone plugin, but for the native plugins, I can’t imagine how to do this except for just downloading directly in SNAP.

Does anyone have a good workflow for this kind of situation?

Thanks in advance, Thomas

You can find the location where the nbm files are stored in the Plugins window (Tools/Plugins). On the Settings tab the repositories are listed:


You are probably only interested in the SNAP and the SNAP Extensions repository.
Copy the URL and remove the updates.xml.gz part. Now past it in your browser. All nbm files will be listed. With some tool like DownThemAll, or so, you can get them easily.

You can then have those files On a USB and use the Installed tab to install these updates.

Another option is to put them on a network drive (along with the updates.xml files) and add the path to the xml to the list of repositories. The others should be removed. I haven’t tried this option yet, but I think it will work.

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The “updatecenter” mechanism is from Netbeans: How to download and install updates (nbm files) offline. Basically, you need to maintain “clones” of the two updatecenter folders. The updates.xmlfiles contain the URL’s of the updates. Marpet suggested using a web download tool. What I do is extract the URLS and feed those to wget:

gzip -dk updates.xml.gz
grep 'distribution.*\.nbm' updates.xml | \
gawk -v FS='[<> =]' -v OFS=/  -vURL="${baseurl}" \
    '{print URL, $8}' |tr -d \" > wget.list
wget -nv -N  -i wget.list

The updatecenter folders are on a local file server and can be used to update linux, Windows, and Mac installations.
In practice, however, SNAP downloads DEM’s “on demand” so can be painful to use with a slow internet connection.

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Thanks for the replies! I’ll give this a try and report back…

This went incredibly well: thanks again for the ideas! Saved about 500MB of downloads for each machine…

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Hi there,
I’m reopening this old post - hope that’s ok?
Is there any possbility to do an offline installation of modules in Snap 6.0? I’ve so far downloaded the latest module versions (.nbm) from http://step.esa.int/updatecenter/6.0/ to USB. However, I don’t see the option to manually update Installed modules in the Plugins window from the SNAP 6.0 GUI as suggested by @marpet:

Thanks for your ideas!

What I wrote is wrong. It is not on the Installed tab, but on the Downloaded tab.
You can select multiple nbm files in the file selection dialog when clicking on “Add Plugins”.

Thanky for your rapid reply!
It’s true, I can select these nbm files in the dialog described. However, they don’t appear in the “Downloaded” window afterwards.
Also I tried to set local sources in the “Settings” tab (which point to the directory containing the .nbms and the update.xml.gz), while I disabled the standard update URLs.

Unfortunately, running updates from the “Updates” Tab then results in the following error.

In principle you local repository works and is properly configured. That this network error pops up is strange.

When I select the nbm files They show up in the Downloaded tab and I can click on install:


Maybe you have already the latest versions or this problem is somehow connected with the error above.

This is indeed strange. I’m pretty sure that I don’t have the latest versions as I still cannot read in the current L2A metadata files. It is probably connected to the restrictive configuration of my network.

@oana_hogoiu, @marpet, @ABraun – can we make a FAQ and/or Wiki article out of this… I think it is a very important information that we should keep.
Along side the one about where to store the auxiliary data.

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hi, i want to ask why the site how to download n install updates (nbm files) offline cannot reach, what other website to reach that?

http://step.esa.int/updatecenter/8.0/ is currently reachable for me, but there is a problem with the https configuration so it is flagged as not secure. Firefox says the site does not support encryption. Many downloaders and browsers refuse to download files under these circumstances, but encryption of public files should not be necessary. Https is, however, still important to ensure that you are connecting to the real updatecenter. Some firewalls may block connections under these conditions. If you are behind an enterprise firewall you may need to get advice from your IT people.

Strange, on my side the certificate and HTTPS connection are working as expected… what problem did you encounter exactly? When did you last try? The certificate is valid from April onwards…

I tried the site using Firefox 88.0 while I was composing the post (3 hours ago), from a residential network so not behind an enterprise firewall. I just tried it again from the same computer. There is a lock symbol next to the URL bar, but a red slash on the lock. Clicking on the lock gives the indication that the connection is not encrypted.

I suspect Firefox expects the connection to be redirected to https (which many sites do). Chrome 90.0.4430.93 and Edge 90.0.818.49 both connect using http but add “not secure” in the URL bar.

All 3 browsers work using https in the URL. In Firefox I can set https only mode.

It occurred to me that the check to see if https is available when given a http URL could timeout during peak hours. Many sites will always redirect to http to https, so systems that try to enforce use of https might be confused.

I forgot to say in the last message that I also updated the drivers.
Thanks a lot for your support but now the program is not starting at all (I only see a small window with the JRE logo and anything else).

I am afraid I will give up as it is taking a huge mamount of time to solve the issue.

Many thanks again and best regards
Fabio