Re: cd image mirror - site owners attitudes
On 07-Aug-1998, Thomas Adams <tadams@pobox.com> wrote:
> I want to inquire if other people out there had similar difficulties obtaining
> the hamm images.
>
> First I tried the cdimage.debian.org server and learned people outside of the ukaren't welcome there. Then I checked the mirror site in Germany where I am
> located. Once there I saw a message like "use rsync". I write CDRs on an NT box
> and didn't find an rsync port so I couldn't use the mirror as they didn't let
> you download the image by means of http. Afterwards I checked out the mirror
> site in NL and they finally let me download the images. Much to my horror I
> found out they were corrupt when I checked them with MD5SUM the next morning.
> Now was the time for some help and I used IRC to ask for a working site and
> people out there told me about ftp.de.debian.org which was good because it
> resolved to a german university and we universities are connected with
> relatively high bandwidth. The problem was their ftp daemon refused my
> connection attempts. After fiddling with some ftp clients and some computers
> I came to the conclusion that they block your IP address if a connection
> doesn't get authorized the right way or something. I.E. mistype user name
> or password and you're out of business. :-( My last resort was SunSITE UK
> which finally delivered working images.
>
> Now, my question is why is it so hard to get these images? If somebody sets
> up a mirror site am I wrong to assume that I'm allowed to download it in a
> hassle free way?
Most of these people have to pay for their net access (e.g. outgoing
bandwidth), or keep it to acceptable limits.
An incredible number of people download an entire 650MB image to just
burn 1 CD, of which they will probably only install 5%.
Surely you can see why people need to limit access to keep things to
a reasonable level.
Other than that, it sounds like you had technical difficulties.
Buying a CD from any of the CD vendors would probably be much less
hassle.
It also sounds like you are complaining about a free service -- you are
quite within your rights to set up your own mirror if you think the
existing mirror sites aren't doing a good enough job.
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