Re: package pool and big Packages.gz file

[Goswin Brederlow <goswin.brederlow@student.uni-tuebingen.de>]

>>>>> " " == Sam Vilain <sam@vilain.net> writes:

     > On Fri, 5 Jan 2001 09:33:05 -0700 (MST) Jason Gunthorpe
     > <jgg@debian.org> wrote:

    >> > If that suits your needs, feel free to write a bugreport on
    >> apt about this.  Yes, I enjoy closing such bug reports with a
    >> terse response.  Hint: Read the bug page for APT to discover
    >> why!

    >> From bug report #76118:

     > No. Debian can not support the use of rsync for anything other
     > than mirroring, APT will never support it.

     > Why?  Because if everyone used rsync, the loads on the servers
     > that supported rsync would be too high?  Or something else?  --
     > Sam Vilain, sam@vilain.net WWW: http://sam.vilain.net/ GPG
     > public key: http://sam.vilain.net/sam.asc

Actually the load should drop, providing the following feature add
ons:

1. cached checksums and pulling instead of pushing
2. client side unpackging of compressed streams

That way the rsync servers would have to first server the checksum
file from cache (being 200-1000 smaller than the real file) and then
just the blocks the client asks for. So if 1% of the file being
rsynced fits its even and everything above that saves bandwidth.

The current mode of operation of rsync works in the reverse, so all
the computation is done on the server every time, which of cause is a
heavy load on the server.

I hope both features will work without chaning the server, but if not,
we will have to wait till servers catch up with the feature.

MfG
        Goswin