On Thu, Jul 08, 1999 at 12:22:45AM -0400, you wrote: > It has a direct effect on what happens when people use FTP as the > interface to access the packages. That isn't the only interface, but > it is one of them (or at least it was in the past). > > Are we having a misunderstanding about something? I have a feeling > that there is a misunderstanding somewhere. Which is why I said a couple of days ago that I thought you missed the significance of apt. The apt config file looks something like this: deb http://http.us.debian.org/debian stable main contrib non-free deb http://non-us.debian.org/debian-non-US stable non-US That url for main/contrib/non-free is stable accross debian releases, and the name is rotated against a list of mirrors via round-robin dns. Splitting non-free onto a seperate server and leaving all other things equal means that the config file (which most users never really look at) would change to this: deb http://http.us.debian.org/debian stable main contrib deb http://nonfree.debian.org/debian stable non-free deb http://non-us.debian.org/debian-non-US stable non-US Didn't buy us much, did it? Except now the nonfree server isn't mirrored, we're increasing the load on the bandwidth that's been donated to us, we've broken the configurations of an unknown number of people whose systems used to work, we've made a lot of work for the people who have to implement this, and nothing's changed for the new user. We can get the same level of impact on the user community, and the same degree of seperation in the config file, by rewriting it thus: deb http://http.us.debian.org/debian stable main contrib deb http://http.us.debian.org/debian stable non-free deb http://non-us.debian.org/debian-non-US stable non-US Now non-free's on a seperate line (which is all the other change really bought you) without all the associated breakage and hardship. Alternatively, you could set up debian.gnu.org as an exact mirror of debian/main save an apt config of: deb http://debian.gnu.org/debian stable main deb http://non-us.debian.gnu.org/debian-non-US stable/non-US main Now you're only seeing free packages, you've got a free-only server, and you didn't break things for people who aren't interested. If you want to sanitize the web pages, that's still a seperate proposal... Mike Stone
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