Metalinks contain mirror and p2p locations along with checksums and other metadata for faster and easier downloads. Downloads can be distributed between mirrors and checksums are automatically verified when it finishes. Mirrors have location and priority information to make the download more efficient.
Metalinks for CentOS are automatically generated at http://download.packages.ro/metalink/centos/ by your mirror RoEduNet Iasi (http://www.iasi.roedu.net/). These are for CentOS 3.8 and 4.4.
Here's what part of a .metalink looks like:
<files> <file name="CentOS-4.4-i386-LiveCD.iso"> <os>Linux-x86</os> <size>721965056</size> <verification> <hash type="md5">747c9e33a10fdbf5919d9fd188ab7d23</hash> </verification> <resources> <url type="http" location="RO" preference="80">
http://ftp.iasi.roedu.net/mirrors/centos.org/4.4/isos/i386/CentOS-4.4-i386-L iveCD.iso </url> <url type="http" location="US" preference="60">
http://mirrors.kernel.org/centos/4.4/isos/i386/CentOS-4.4-i386-LiveCD.iso </url> <url type="http" location="US" preference="60">
http://mirror.chpc.utah.edu/pub/centos/4.4/isos/i386/CentOS-4.4-i386-LiveCD. iso </url> <url type="http" location="UK" preference="60">
http://www.mirrorservice.org/sites/mirror.centos.org/4.4/isos/i386/CentOS-4. 4-i386-LiveCD.iso </url> </resources>
Download clients are available for Unix, Mac, & Windows. aria2 RPMs for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 are at http://dries.ulyssis.org/rpm/packages/aria2/info.html
OpenOffice.org and many Linux/BSD distributions are using metalink. Here's a few places:
http://distribution.openoffice.org/p2p/magnet.html http://en.opensuse.org/Released_Version#Metalink http://desktopbsd.net/index.php?id=73 http://www.pcbsd.org/?p=download http://www.archlinux.org/download/ http://www.redwall-firewall.com/content/view/14/33/ http://yui.mine.nu/berry/edownload.php
(( Anthony Bryan )) Metalink [ http://www.metalinker.org ]