Debian ISOs

["Anthony L. Bryan" <albryan@comcast.net>]

Hi,

Metalinks might be helpful on Debian's download page for CD/DVD images. You
could have a single quick link to your ISOs that contains all the
mirror/p2p/checksum info in it.

Metalinks, a cross platform vendor neutral fortmat, are used by download
managers & contain Mirror & p2p locations for segmented downloads, along
with automatic checksum verification when the download completes. It spreads
the download between multiple servers so its faster for users, more
reliable, & less load on any one server. Metalinks are backward compatible
too.

If you're interested, you can try it out with aria2 (Unix command line)
(http://aria2.sourceforge.net), Speed Download (Mac)
(http://www.yazsoft.com), wxDownload Fast (Mac/Unix/Win), or GetRight
(Windows) (http://www.getright.com), then clicking on these samples:

http://www.metalinker.org/samples.html#isos (There's a metalink for Debian
DVD ISOs there).

Also, OpenOffice.org uses metalinks to distribute their free office suite at
http://distribution.openoffice.org/p2p/magnet.html & a few other Linux
distributions use it for their ISOs.

There's a video of metalink working in GetRight here:
http://www.metalinker.org/implementation.html

Metalinks are just simple XML like this:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<metalink version="3.0" generator="Metalink Generator v1.00.0034"
xmlns="http://www.metalinker.org/";>
  <publisher>
    <name>debian</name>
    <url>http://www.debian.org/</url>
  </publisher>
  <description>Debian 3.1r2 i386 DVD ISO</description>
  <files>
    <file name="debian-31r2-i386-binary-1.iso">
      <version>3.1r2</version>
      <os>Linux-x86</os>
      <verification>
        <hash type="md5">e467b508185f4fdd8e97c9ee76045288</hash>
      </verification>
      <resources>
        <url type="http" location="us"
preference="100">http://cdimage.debian.org/debian-cd/current/i386/iso-dvd/de
bian-31r2-i386-binary-1.iso</url>
        <url type="http" location="us"
preference="100">http://debian.osuosl.org/debian-cdimage/current/i386/iso-dv
d/debian-31r2-i386-binary-1.iso</url>
        <url type="http" location="ro"
preference="100">http://ftp.iasi.roedu.net/mirrors/ftp.debian.org/debian-cd/
current/i386/iso-dvd/debian-31r2-i386-binary-1.iso</url>
      </resources>
    </file>
  <files>
    <file name="debian-31r2-i386-binary-2.iso">
      <version>3.1r2</version>
      <os>Linux-x86</os>
      <verification>
        <hash type="md5">34ad0d7a9ff4a44c5cffb6d238ac4b26</hash>
      </verification>
      <resources>
        <url type="http" location="us"
preference="100">http://cdimage.debian.org/debian-cd/current/i386/iso-dvd/de
bian-31r2-i386-binary-2.iso</url>
        <url type="http" location="us"
preference="100">http://debian.osuosl.org/debian-cdimage/current/i386/iso-dv
d/debian-31r2-i386-binary-2.iso</url>
        <url type="http" location="ro"
preference="100">http://ftp.iasi.roedu.net/mirrors/ftp.debian.org/debian-cd/
current/i386/iso-dvd/debian-31r2-i386-binary-2.iso</url>
      </resources>
    </file>

  </files>
</metalink>


thanks,

Anthony Bryan
http://www.metalinker.org/