On 7/20/20 8:32 AM, Andrew Cater wrote:
Streaming production of .iso files _is_ technically possible. Jigdo
effectively builds the iso file from chunks of ten or so files until
the disk is complete and checksummed. As mentioned, this query was
about stopping production of the .iso files specifically meant for the
oldestMac mini. That certainly sounds possible for Bullseye when it
gets here since that particular model will be about 15 years old and
there's likely to be very few of them still running.
I'm collecting what people are sending me on and off list.
that is greatly appreciated
It does seem that we may be able to stop routine production of as many
images. Netinst, something DVD-ish sized (so smaller than 8G) and some
(larger file size ??) may do it. The problem of using http to download
large files is that it's fairly difficult on a slow link or one which
is losing packets.
I suffer with a slow link. We use bittorrents whenever possible.
Downloads for even modest size ISOs sometimes take days, but it does work.
Jigdo does work well to build .iso images - it might need more
documentation.
Yes, enhance the documentation please. It is befuddling to me.
Hope this helps
On Mon, Jul 20, 2020 at 2:25 PM Stefan Monnier
<monn...@iro.umontreal.ca <mailto:monn...@iro.umontreal.ca>> wrote:
>> An alternative is to have "virtual ISO images", i.e. images
which are
>> constructed on the fly (presumably by jigdo) on the web-server
side.
> Assuming that a complete set of ISOs for whatever medium occupies
> at most 100 GB, it seems better to have the images ready rather
than to
> assemble them on demand, even if the mirror latency and
bandwidth are
> no problem.
> This would spare the nightmare of managing the life cycle of
temporary ISOs
> on the server. I assume that all images would fit on a single
modern HDD.
I was thinking of a scheme by which the ISO is constructed and
streamed
at the same time, so the complete ISO images aren't ever stored whole
anywhere on the server.
> But the reason for letting the user perform jigdo download is
that the network
> load vanishes in the normal traffic of the package servers. If
download gets
> interrupted, one just has to start it again to get the remaining
work
> completed.
Very good point. I did not consider the interrupt&restart issue.
> The production of jigdo files is a linear effort only if the
producer
> knows where the filesystem stores file content data. This
knowledge is in
> the ISO 9660 producers genisoimage and xorriso. For other
filesystems
> the matching jigdo producer software is not available yet.
I'm not sure I understand what this means, but it does sound like it
implies that streaming production of ISOs is technically possible.
Stefan
