[CentOS-devel] Metalinks for CentOS (all mirrors & checksums in one file)

Sun Oct 15 19:57:45 UTC 2006
Anthony L. Bryan <albryan at comcast.net>

Hi,

Still seeing if you'd like to use metalinks for your ISO downloads.

Metalinks contain mirror and p2p locations along with checksums and other
metadata for faster and easier downloads. Downloads are distributed between
mirrors and checksums are automatically verified when it finishes. Here's a
good description:

'Metalink makes complex download pages obsolete by replacing long lists of
download mirrors and BitTorrent trackers with a single .metalink file. As
you might have already guessed, a .metalink file is a file that tells a
download manager all the different ways it can download a file. The file
itself takes the form of an open XML standard that can list an unlimited
number of HTTP and FTP sources as well as BitTorrent trackers and ed2k and
magnet links.'
(http://www.downloadsquad.com/2006/08/28/metalinks-integrated-bittorrent-htt
p-and-ftp-downloads/)

There's a metalink for CentOS at
http://www.metalinker.org/samples/CentOS-4.4-i386-LiveCD.iso.metalink if
anyone wants to try it out. Here's what part of it looks like:

    <file name="CentOS-4.4-i386-LiveCD.iso">
      <version>4.4</version>
      <verification>
        <hash type="md5">747c9e33a10fdbf5919d9fd188ab7d23</hash>
      </verification>
      <resources>
        <url type="http"
preference="100">http://altruistic.lbl.gov/mirrors/centos/4.4/isos/i386/Cent
OS-4.4-i386-LiveCD.iso</url>
        <url type="http"
preference="100">http://centos.mirror.nac.net/4.4/isos/i386/CentOS-4.4-i386-
LiveCD.iso</url>
        <url type="http"
preference="100">http://dist1.800hosting.com/centos/4.4/isos/i386/CentOS-4.4
-i386-LiveCD.iso</url>
        <url type="http" location="us"
preference="100">http://ftp.osuosl.org/pub/centos/4.4/isos/i386/CentOS-4.4-i
386-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
http://puppylinux.org/wikka/Puppy210

(( Anthony Bryan
 )) Metalink [ http://www.metalinker.org ]