[CentOS-mirror] DVD Access and why it is restricted

[Johnny Hughes]

All,

We have added some servers for msync-dvd access, so it should be a bit
better than before .. but I thought I would explain why access is
restricted again for the record.

1.  DVDs are > 2GB in size, so MOST web servers on Linux (except for
apache > 2.2 or lighttpd) can not show them or provide them for download.

EXAMPLE: CentOS-5 can do > 2GB files with the included apache ...
CentOS-3 and CentOS-4 can not.

2.  The CentOS infrastructure only has a limited number of machines that
can host the DVDs and all the other parts of the tree due to increased size.

3.  Lots of extra bandwidth expended when we sync out the DVDs ...

4.  Even though we ASK that only approved mirrors sync the DVDs, other
people who are not public mirrors WILL decide that those rules do not
apply to THEM, only OTHER people.  THEY will sync from our servers even
though we ASK them not too.

For all those reasons, we limit access to the rsync channel for DVDs.
Especially since most mirrors can not give them out anyway (since they
are > 2GB).

We still have a limited number of mirrors that pass out the DVDs in our
infrastructure (though I just added 4 more) and it is still probably
usually faster for you to get them from faster mirrors than ours anyway
.. especially at CentOS point release time.

There are about 200 official public mirrors that want to get updates
from us at release time, and if all of them get updates via the
msync-dvd mirrors it is going to be a _VERY_LONG_ time before those get out.

Also understand that there is only 24 hours in a day and I am only one
person ... and I have a real job :D ... so I can only manage CentOS
infrastructure for 23 Hours and 59 Minutes a day !!!

Thanks,
Johnny Hughes

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