[CentOS-mirror] Proposel - jigdo for iso Images

[Billy Vierra]

On Oct 29, 2009, at 10:52 PM, "J.H." <warthog9 at kernel.org> wrote:

> Uwe Kiewel wrote:
>> Tru Huynh schrieb:
>>> On Thu, Oct 29, 2009 at 02:59:22PM -0400, Nick Olsen wrote:
>>>> Addition of jigdo yes. Replace ISO's no.
>>>> Educating joe sixpack on using something new, well I like to use
>>>> altercation avoidance.
>>>>
>>> please no top posting ;)
>>>
>>> There was a thread about jidgo in the archives and it boiled down
>>> to:
>>> - someone has to maintain the jidgo package in the CentOS tree
>>> (how would a CentOS user for C3/4/5 use jidgo?)
>>> - document it in the wiki (how to use, at least)
>>> - someone needs to make it work from the current setup
>>> - how much burden will it put on the mirrors? centos.org ones and
>>> public ones?
>>> (I have no experience on using it)
>>> - no one volonteered.
>>> - one more thing to check for the QA release process.
>>>
>>> back to you :)
>>
>> Ok. Understood.
>>
>> It was just an idea because Fedora do it successfuly since Fedora 6
>> and
>> Debian do so as well.
>
> Ok back that monkey truck up slightly here.  Fedora has *ONLY* been
> doing it for the Fedora Spins stuff which, as you can imagine, an
> *INCREDIBLY* low volume set of accesses.  Debian is going to be
> likewise, and I wouldn't exactly call it a popular thing from them.
>
> Speaking as a mirror here are my thoughts:
>
> - Cutting down on the working data set is a good thing, though I do
> have
> some serious reservations about this on a larger scale.
>
> - Claiming a webserver doesn't handle large files is a bogus
> statement,
> if your on Linux you have send_file() and that is darned fast and
> efficient.  It more or less doesn't matter what your file size is
> for that.
>
> - If your on a client, or a server, and it doesn't support http
> restarts
> you really have to ask why?  I can understand how *PAINFUL* that is
> to a
> mirror to do a random seek into the middle of a file, but once the
> download has started it's effectively no additional overhead beyond
> that.
>
> - Speaking to the apache module that auto-generates the iso on the
> fly:
> any mirror of any reasonable size will shoot this down in a heartbeat.
> We already have an I/O problem on the systems, ram issues, etc.
> Adding
> something into apache that's going to thrash about and magically
> generate this as it's requested is *WORSE* than the wasted disk space.
> Again send_file() is your friend.
>
> My thoughts
> ------------
>
> Honestly if Centos is actively looking to eliminate the ISOs I would
> tentatively support this, but Jigdo (at least the last time I used it)
> is *ANYTHING* but userfriendly.  It would *HAVE* to be as simple as
> download a script, program, etc you get a download box and *poof* your
> dvd comes out, no user interaction unless a lot of advanced options
> are
> selected somewhere, and last time I used it it wasn't that simple.
>
> Furthermore I think jigdo is likely going to be a lot of work, with
> little payoff.  From my gut reaction I think moving to more of a
> universal network installer (ala http://boot.kernel.org w/ it's
> network
> installers, which happen to include Centos)[Disclaimer: I'm one of the
> devs & the primary admin for http://boot.kernel.org] is a *LOT* more
> intuitive to a user and a lot simpler to get them to use than Jigdo
> ever
> will be, and honestly it gets a user moving sooner and it can take
> less
> time anyway depending on what a user selects, has all of the
> advantages
> of Jigdo and with significantly fewer downsides.
>
> Just my $0.02
>
> - John 'Warthog9' Hawley
> Chief Kernel.org Administrator
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> CentOS-mirror at centos.org
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I agree with the apache module not being feasable... On top of the
fact you have additional resource usage from it you are making a huge
assumtion that the mirror is running apache.
As great as apache is, it is resource hog. Something that only serves
high volume static files is rarely running apache.

My 2 cents on that :)
- Billy