Re: [rhn-users] V9.0 ISO 2

["Mario J. Borgnia" <mborgnia nih gov>]

I was able to resume downloading with curl. However 1 out of three iso
images came corrupted. It may or may not be related.


On Tue, 2003-04-01 at 13:34, M. Edward (Ed) Borasky wrote:
> On Tue, 1 Apr 2003, Ken Snider wrote:
> 
> > Steve Wakelin wrote:
> > > Hello,
> > >
> > > Trying to download and seem only to be presented with an empty file.
> > >
> > > Anyone else experiencing this?
> >
> > Yep. Using curl, I simply had to retry, and retry, and retry, until it spit
> > out a valid ISO.
> >
> > Also, remember that the URL they give you has a very short lifespan, try
> > reloading your RHN page and using the new URL.
> 
> Yeah, that's another thing that's wrong with this whole scheme. For the
> benefit of the rest of the folks here, let me list *all* the issues I've
> encountered:
> 
> 1. Bandwidth. There simply isn't enough bandwidth for downloading the
> ISOs to all the RHN subscribers who want them. This is something the RHN
> folks could have anticipated, but not quantified. They essentially
> invited a DDoS attack on their facility, and are struggling to adapt to
> it.
> 
> 2. The URLs have a very limited lifespan. You have to reload the page
> every time you have to restart. And, because of 1, it takes a long time
> to reload the page.
> 
> 3. "curl -C -" doesn't work. If you get a partial download, and then it
> croaks, you need to start over from scratch. I can't tell if this is a
> separate problem from 2 or if it's because of 2, but the end result is
> the same ... if you only get 600 MB of a 650 MB ISO the first time, you
> have to get the whole 650 MB the second time, not just the last 50 MB.
> 
> Putting on my marketing hat, the correct way to offer "early access" to
> RHN subscribers would be to offer discounted or free next-day shipping
> of the Red Hat Professional box set, shipped on the same day Red Hat
> ships to its retail outlets. Compare the bandwidth and cost per megabyte
> per second of multiple cargo aircraft full of DVDs and CDs with that of
> the Internet.
-- 
Mario J. Borgnia <mborgnia nih gov>