Re: Apt and rsync... I know...
Matt Zimmerman <mdz@debian.org> writes:
> On Sun, Jan 18, 2004 at 01:43:30AM -0700, Doug Holland wrote:
>
> > That's it. One piddly little patch, which most likely affected
> > one line of source code, required me to waste 2.5 hours of dialup
> > bandwidth downloading a .deb file that's almost identical to the
> > one I downloaded yesterday. Am I the only one who finds this
> > irritating?
>
> This all makes sense, except for the "required" part.
>
> > I remember the reason why apt is not currently doing rsync is
> > because it hogs I/O and CPU cycles on the Debian servers. That's
> > a valid reason, but surely there are ways around it.
>
> Surely. First, arrange for all of the packages in Debian to be compressed
> using gzip --rsyncable. Then, find a server with gobs of disk, network, I/O
> and CPU resources, mirror the Debian archive, and run an anonymous rsync
> server. Then, write an rsync method for apt, or use rproxy, or whatever.
>
> That is the approximate order in which things would need to happen. It's a
> bit early in the process to be pointing fingers at apt.
Several people have written rsync method modules for apt
already. Thats not the problem. :)
> > I suggest that rsync files be precalculated, so rsync downloads
> > don't have to be crunched on the fly. The servers would store
> > .deb files - foo-x.y.z.deb, and they would store the rsync diffs
> > between it and the previous version - foo.x.y.z-1_x.y.z.rsdeb.
> > That way, if the user doing an apt-get upgrade has the previous
> > .deb file in his cache, apt would download the rsync diff file
> > instead of the full .deb, saving loads of bandwidth, and since the
> > rsyncs are precomputed and cached, the servers don't get hosed.
> >
> > Am I totally off base suggesting this?
>
> Yes. It shows that you haven't read the previous discussions that you
> alluded to at the beginning of your message, because they explain why this
> is not a good solution.
>
> Bug #128818 has some starting points.
MfG
Goswin
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