Hi All,
Firstly, if you feel this is not the appropriate list, can you please
suggest another ;)
As mentioned in a few places, and with thanks to responses received from
a few people who provided an "iso-info" run for iso files I didn't have
yet, I have got to an operational state of a program I'm calling:
archive-teleconstructor.py
The idea is to save a heap of download time and capacity when you know
that a heap of files included in a download archive {iso at this stage}
are already present on your disk or mountable media. The second
requirement is that the download is presented in a format that allows
for partial downloading and detection of correct data before actual
download. This means rsync and bittorrent {tested with azureus}.
It is written in python and included as an attachment, along with some
iso-info files made by Bruno for fedora 7 dvd and rescue discs.
For example, the F-7-i386-rescuecd.iso can be constructed from the
content of F-7-i386-DVD.iso, and an rsync that took less than a minute
{my connection speed might be reasonable, but none of the mirrors I have
tested with are very fast at the moment}. The stats for that process showed:
error: verify_files: could not find local files for: 3 files
verify_files: found local files for: 22 files
I used rsync to finish the download. Comparing the constructed iso
before and after the rsync completed the download:
overall statistics: identical:different 101,499,602: 9,518 {99.9905%}
What this says is that after construct only 9518 bytes where different
from the final file {which was tested again with sha1sum}.
In fact, it would be easy to include such a program on the DVD.iso, that
builds the rescue cd on demand {with very little extra data required -
unlike jigdo that seems to need large {250MB} template files for DVD
sized downloads}.
To get the F-7-i386-DVD.iso in the first place, I provided as local
files the mounted f7t3 and f7t4 isos, and my most recent development
download folder. Because it is quite difficult at the moment to get a
responsive rsync server, I completed the download with azureus. The
completion jumped from 1% to about 49% after running the program.
For instructions see the --help and the example near the bottom of the code.
I would love to hear your criticisms or kudos for anything about the
code or it's operation as it stands, especially since it's my first
python program, many thanks, DaveT.
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