How can we speed up rpm downloads?

Nigel Henry cave.dnb2m97pp at aliceadsl.fr
Thu Jun 12 16:50:35 UTC 2008


On Thursday 12 June 2008 17:42, Justin Conover wrote:
> Is there any current work on yum-presto, deltarpm or some other method of
> getting the downloads for updates to be smaller and quicker?  Can you
> compress rpm's to make the the downloads faster?
>
> Currently with yum presto there is only one site that I have found that has
> the deltarpms.
>
> https://fedorahosted.org/presto
>
> Currently now on a fresh install of F9 && update
>
> Transaction Summary
> ===========================================================================
>== Install     14 Package(s)
> Update     185 Package(s)
> Remove       0 Package(s)
>
> Total download size: 475 M
>
>
> Half a gig is a lot
> (181/199): nautilus-2.22.3-1.fc9.x86_64.rpm              | 5.0 MB
> 00:42
> (182/199): rhythmbox-0.11.5-12.fc9.x86_64.rpm            | 5.3 MB
> 00:42
> (183/199): gtk2-2.12.10-2.fc9.x86_64.rpm                 | 7.1 MB
> 00:52
> (184/199): libpurple-2.4.2-1.fc9.x86_64.rpm              | 7.4 MB
> 00:53
> (185/199): libgweather-2.22.2-1.fc9.x86_64.rpm           | 7.5 MB
> 00:47
> (186/199): dasher-4.9.0-1.fc9.x86_64.rpm                 | 7.7 MB
> 00:57
> (187/199): openoffice.org-calc-2.4.1-17.3.fc9.x86_64.rpm | 8.3 MB
> 01:03
> (188/199): samba-client-3.2.0-1.rc1.15.fc9.x86_64.rpm    | 9.6 MB
> 01:43
> (189/199): gnome-applets-2.22.2-1.fc9.x86_64.rpm         | 9.6 MB
> 01:29
> (190/199): evolution-2.22.2-2.fc9.x86_64.rpm             |  13 MB
> 01:32
> (191/199): perl-5.10.0-22.fc9.x86_64.rpm                 |  14 MB
> 02:12
> (192/199): gnome-user-docs-2.22.1-1.fc9.noarch.rpm       |  16 MB
> 01:55
> (193/199): samba-common-3.2.0-1.rc1.15.fc9.x86_64.rpm    |  16 MB
> 01:53
> (194/199): kernel-2.6.25.4-30.fc9.x86_64.rpm             |  18 MB
> 02:14
> (195/199): gnome-games-2.22.2.1-1.fc9.x86_64.rpm         |  19 MB
> 02:30
> (196/199): java-1.6.0-openjdk-1.6.0.0-0.13.b09.fc9.x86_6 |  27 MB
> 04:12
> (197/199): frysk-0.4-0.fc9.x86_64.rpm                    |  28 MB     03:29
> (198/199): evolution-help-2.22.2-2.fc9.x86_64.rpm        |  46 MB     03:44
>
> (199/199): openoffice.org-core-2.4.1-17.3.fc9.x86_64.rpm |  84 MB     08:07
>
> Large rpm's are very time consuming to update and/or install.
>
> Guess I answered my own question earlier, I ran gzip on openopfice.org-core
> and it went from 84MB to 83MB.
>
> Fairly loaded question, don't say get a better ISP, I have a very fast
> connection at home, and this d/l view was taken at work with an extremely
> fat pipe.  The problem is size of rpm's being downloaded.
>
> Debian seems to d/l much faster, not exact version but you can get some
> idea size wise.
>
> http://packages.debian.org/etch/openoffice.org-core
>
> wget
> http://security.debian.org/debian-security/pool/updates/main/o/openoffice.o
>rg/openoffice.org-core_2.0.4.dfsg.2-7etch5_amd64.deb
>
> There package is 34MB.
>
> This is an example of one of the larger apps out there I realize that, I
> just grabbed the last one to use as an example.  At 34MB it still takes
> time, but .deb is 50MB cheaper that the .rpm.
>
> Is deltarpm's the solution?  Has anyone talked to all the fedora mirrors to
> have a deltarpm repository?

I can appreciate your problem. My Fedora7 install had an update for Firefox 
(more than 21MB). If I DL Firefox from the Mozilla site (the tar.gz), it's 
only about 9MB. I removed Firefox from Fedora7, and installed the one I'd 
DL'd directly from the Mozilla site. In the case of Firefox, if you have a 
whole bunch of distros like me, you only have to DL the latest Firefox 
version once, and can then update all your distros, without wasting more 
Internet bandwidth.

That aside though, I'm on dialup, and you can well imagine how long big 
updates take. Most recently Debian Lenny, which I discovered I hadn't 
upgraded for nearly 2 months, had over 800MB of updates waiting, and Fedora 
8, which again hadn't been updated for a while, had over 500MB of updates 
waiting. Neither was a bunch of fun, but I've sort of got used to dialup, and 
pay a fixed fee each month for the service, so it's not like it costs me a 
small fortune, but just a lot of patience.

btw: I do also download .iso's for various distros. Kubuntu, and Archlinux 
arn't too bad, as both are only 1 CD's worth, but Fedora is a bunch of fun. 
I've downloaded FC3, 4, 5, and 7 on dialup (that's 4 or 5 CD iso's for each). 
Thankfully someone kindly sent me a set of CD iso's for FC6, and someone else 
sent me a DVD for Fedora 8, which I'm very gratefull for. I havn't gotten 
around to downloading Fedora 9 yet, which is thankfully available as a CD set 
from 1 site. I'll have to psych myself up first before going for Fedora 9. I 
might go for Kubuntu Hardy Heron first, as it also has the option of KDE4, 
and is contained on one CD .iso. I'd like to have a look at KDE4, but it 
seems to be receiving considerable flak, both on the Kubuntu, and Fedora 
list.

I do understand where you're coming from though, and cringe when I see that OO 
needs to be updated. Recently gimp-help was updated on one of my distros, 
which was more than 87MB, and I hardly ever use the Gimp. All I can say is 
that there much be one hell of a lot of images in gimp-help.

Thursday evening ramblings from northern france.

Nigel.







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