Re: why not full CD/DVD images on cdimage.d.o?
On Tue, 14 May 2013 15:33:53 +0100
Steve McIntyre <steve@einval.com> wrote:
> On Sun, May 12, 2013 at 05:03:04PM +0200, Mateusz Poszwa wrote:
> >On Sun, 12 May 2013 20:35:51 +0900
> >Hideki Yamane <henrich@debian.or.jp> wrote:
> >
> >> Hi,
> >>
> >> During Tokyo Debian meeting on Saturday, one participant asked
> >> "why there's less DVD images on cdimage.d.o than MD5SUMS files?"
> >>
> >> Probably this would be to reduce unnecessary download, but
> >> is there any information for this? (just curious)
> >>
> >
> >Hello.
> >
> >This is a (very, very) frequently asked question:
> >
> >http://www.debian.org/CD/faq/#not-all-images
> >
> >Other disc images are meant to be downloaded/assembled with jigdo.
>
> Absolutely, yes.
>
> >Best regards.
> >
> >PS: By the way… I am thinking about launching a server which would
> >provide images absent on the main mirror (as well as some archival
> >ones). Is it desirable?
>
> /me should really finish off jigdoofus to make this easy...
>
I may have worded it badly… I'm sorry.
I should've said s/server/service/. I already had JigdoFUSE working
(being able to assemble images correctly, though not very efficiently)
by the time I discovered jigdoofus. The problem is I only have
FTP access to a free server without ability to mount filesystems now.
I could host the service at home, but my uplink would not suffice
for that purpose. I could also rent another server (VPS?),
but I don't know if it is worth to.
I have other ideas though. In a world closer to perfect,
users would just use jigdo to get Debian. In the real world
though, they usually don't bother to install a separate program
just to get an image. They may already have a BitTorrent client,
but I presume not all images are seeded. For BitTorrent there is
BitLet – a Java applet which downloads a torrent client-side.
It should be possible to write a similar applet for jigdo.
I think even reusing existing packages/CDs would be possible then.
For those who don't have a Java-enabled browser, I think
a PHP (*flinch*) script could be used to assemble images
on-the-fly enabling the ability to download them via HTTP.
The script could be pushed to package/jigdo mirrors to turn
them into CD mirrors. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think
such mirrors could be used as webseeds for BitTorrent.
I'm looking forward to hearing your opinion on these ideas.
If you think they're worth the effort, I might manage to save
some spare time to implement them.
Best regards. :-)
--
Mateusz Poszwa
Reply to: