[Date Prev][Date Next] [Thread Prev][Thread Next] [Date Index] [Thread Index]

Re: Creating jigdo files without loal file access



On Tue, Mar 04, 2003 at 12:33:24PM +0100, Patrick Strasser wrote:
> Richard Atterer wrote:
> >it is mandatory with Debian CDs to set up a "fallback mirror",
> 
> I'm aware of this effect. I have talked to Attila Nagy from fsn.hu, 
> which host a fallback directory for the snapshots. He said setting up a 
> fallback directory for Hurd packages would be no problem for two weeks 
> buffering. I don't expect too much packages to change.

OK. If you need more, I think we could also set up a fallback directory on
gluck.d.o which can be specific to the Hurd CDs, i.e. it'll ensure
successful downloads for as long as you like.

> Of course I can talk to people having access, but we additionaly a
> problem:
> 
> Philip Charles, the creator of the Debian/Hurd CDs, is located in New
> Zealand, and has only low bandwith capacity. He manages to fetch all
> necessary packages, but uploading 5 CDs takes much to long on his
> connection. So he gives the images to a friend, who has better
> connectivity and loads them up. This is quite complicated and takes time.

But then isn't the obvious way to solve the issue the following: Philip
generates the CD images on a Debian server (using nohup/screen to log off
while mkisofs runs), and the image is piped into jigdo-file to generate
jigdo/template files on that server. Subsequently, Phil can download just
the jigdo/template files and recreate the image locally for testing.

The only problem might be that the templates could get too big to download 
over modem. A typical size is 5..10 MB for a full-size CD image. (The 
official Debian CD template files are bigger because they deliberately put 
some files' data in the template.)

> That's why I'm investigating a way to build jigdo file sets without a big
> local filesystem, which is expensive to keep up to date; Philip would
> then build his CDs, make jigdo fiel sets, which are much smaller, and
> hopefully load tehm up himself, aving a lot of time. At the initial
> upload server someone runs jigdo and blows them up to full size.

Oh, in that case I should mention the following possibility: If that
"blowing up" happens on a machine with a full Debian mirror (i.e. the files
needed by the template are all /somewhere/, but you don't know where), just
do this:

  jigdo-file --cache ~/.jigdo-cache.db make-image \
      -t foo.template -i output.iso /my/mirror
      
Only the template file is required by this, not the jigdo file. Philip
would have to take care that the template file created by him only
references files which are available on the machine where "jigdo-file
make-image" is run.

Cheers,

  Richard

-- 
  __   _
  |_) /|  Richard Atterer     |  CS student at the Technische  |  GnuPG key:
  | \/¯|  http://atterer.net  |  Universität München, Germany  |  0x888354F7
  ¯ '` ¯



Reply to: