Update patches versus full update RPM

[Andy Green]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

On Saturday 10 January 2004 03:42, Leonard den Ottolander wrote:

> > How does this help the problem of an overworked download server, then?
> > People on dial-up will get timeouts just as easily as people on
> > broadband.
> >
> > Notice how few rsync servers there are on the mirror list?  Part of the
> > reason is that rsync can put a much larger load on the server.  Any kind
> > of decompression and/or recompression will just make that worse.
>
> Yes, I thought of that just now. Rsync is not an option since it wastes too
> much cpu on the server side, so we should go for "smart patches" (do any

Since this was last discussed a few weeks ago I was lurking on the Bittorrent 
ml, they are addressing the binding of many files into a single torrent with 
clients able to cherrypick filrs from within that.  BT is already a weak sort 
of rsync as it will not try to download segments which already have the 
correct md5.

If someone mounted the distro ISO, updated a few RPMS and umounted it, the 
resulting filesystem should bear a LOT of resemblance to the original, only 
the new RPMs and the filesystem areas of the image should be changed.  So 
getting BT to save over the original should be a very quick download.

- -Andy
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.2.3 (GNU/Linux)

iD8DBQE//+mdjKeDCxMJCTIRAkF/AJ4zJU7sy4QRAqssOOzmAExnlXbFgACdHUeh
qlXhqIR25uv9BLvwWESimB8=
=pWuK
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----