On 7/14/07, Anil Gulecha <anil.verve at gmail.com> wrote: > Hmm.. > > I think that BeleniX iso is non-ISO compliant, due to the files on it > being arranged. That si alright. As far as checking the consistency of > the CD, md5 digest should be the correct way to check. If you download > the file by torrent, then the built in hash checking is good ehough to > download only the incorrect pieces.
Hi Anil, I'm not sure what you mean about the ISO, but it's still a file. Yes, you can manually verify the full file checksum, and yes, you can repair a corrupted download with a torrent, but because of restrictions and configuration issues, not everyone everywhere can use a torrent. With a metalink, the download can be repaired from FTP/HTTP resources, with no torrent needed (altho some clients can combine them). > The metalink XML for belenix is quite interesting. Apart from the > regular checksums, the image is divided into 86 chunks with individual > checksums. A compliant FTP client should be able to repair the ISO > image by just re-downloading the corrupt bits - much like bittorrent. Hello, Venky. That's exactly how it works! It's all pretty simple, once you look at the XML like you've done it usually makes sense. I don't always go into it, but try to explain it with "error correcting" or "self repairing/healing" or other phrases that don't always get the point across. And yes, it works over FTP/HTTP. It can also be very fast if a file is on multiple mirrors (like the OpenOffice.org or openSUSE metalinks). Give aria2 a try if you have time. > Anthony, > Is there a way to configure the number of chunk the ISO is divided into? Yes. I assume you would want more chunks, so if there were errors, the re-downloaded chunks would be smaller? That would be better on error prone connections, but slightly increases the metalink file size (50-100k, not really an issue when downloading a 700 meg ISO :) Let me know, and I will redo the .metalink. -- (( Anthony Bryan ... Metalink [ http://www.metalinker.org ] )) Easier, More Reliable, Self Healing Downloads
