The Pseudo-Image Kit v2.0pre2

["J.A. Bezemer" <costar@panic.et.tudelft.nl>]

Hi!

I had some of free time last week, so I "just" rewrote the Pseudo-Image
Kit a few times. The result is that downloads go as fast as possible (the
backgrounded download never sleeps) because I use a download queue of 25
(default) files. Also, the local-mirror routine has been optimized and
documentation has been updated.

Furthermore, there is now a Windows 95/98/NT port that's fully functional
except `rsync' on some versions of Windows 95 (work in progress...). When
a working rsync arrives, the `pre2' will be dropped from the version
number.

Available from

  http://panic.et.tudelft.nl/~costar/pseudo-image-kit/

Please give it a try -- and be amazed by the speed. From a mirror on
a local harddisk you can get two Official images per hour!


While I was at it, I also did a "minor redesign" of the cdimage.d.o
webpage. The result is at

  http://panic.et.tudelft.nl/~costar/pseudo-image-kit/c.d.o/

It's gotten a bit complex, but that's what reality is. The idea is that
first-time users will click their way to the correct advice. If they
choose to ignore that, it's their fault. We can always drastically shorten
the ftp-mirrors list ;-) 

If nobody has major problems with it, it would be very nice if you could
put it on the actual cdimage.d.o. A .tgz (7 kB) with all the files is at

  http://panic.et.tudelft.nl/~costar/pseudo-image-kit/c.d.o.tgz


Then a few other remarks:
 - At the moment I've several binary-i386-1.iso.list files in
   various directories. But I don't know any more what's r0, r2 or r3.
   Would it be a big problem to include the version number in the
   filename of the images, like 21r3-binary-i386-1.iso ?

 - You can't rsync the source images from the $ARCH directories, because
   they're symlinks (or you must use `-L'). Also, it might/will give
   newbies the idea that each arch. has its own source set. Wouldn't it be
   wiser to have the actual images/list files only in the source/ subdir,
   and 0-length files "$ARCH/source-images-are-in-the-source-dir" ?
   (just like the "2.1-images-have-moved" files)

 - The pseudo-image-makelist program in the UNIX/Linux version of the
   Pseudo-Image Kit has been renamed to pi-makelist for convenience reasons
   (I want to do `rm pseudo-image*' to clear all downloaded stuff) and
   adapted a little. It now excludes more files that aren't on the
   Debian mirrors, especially for m68k. If you have the time, it would
   be nice if you could re-generate the .list files with the new pi-makelist.

 - The 2.1r3 source images don't have .list files yet.


Regards,
  Anne Bezemer