Bill Cox wrote: > Integrating BitTorrent into YUM seems like a good idea to me. The > distribution of files with BitTorrent is quite secure and robust. > > Instead of directly integrating BT into YUM, I'd propose creating a BT > client/server that acts like FTP. It'd simply allow users to publish > directory trees with the server, and clients could download from the > directory tree in BitTorrent manner, sharing file pieces among > themselves. > > I'm thinking that we could create scripts for mirroring popular RPM > sites by having a low-bandwidth server that downloads them periodically, > and making them available as torrents. YUM would have to be modified to > use the FTP-like utility to download packages. > > So, in summary, I suspect all we really need to integrate BT and YUM is > build an FTP-like utility based on BT for pubishing file systems and > downloading individual files from those file systems. I know I probably shouldn't get involved, but the whole BitTorrent with yum thing doesn't make sense to me. There are a couple reasons: 1) BitTorrent is only designed for *BIG* files. Several hundred MB or more. The biggest rpm I know of is OOo, which is only slightly over 100MB. The rest are much smaller. BitTorrent isn't as nice with smaller files. 2) If you have enough machines (I'd guess the number is somewhere around 2), then having a machine mirror the updates locally once a night will save a ton of bandwidth usage over trying to use BitTorrent with all those machines. Why are so many people interested in using the BitTorrent protocol in an inefficient way, rather than the simpler and less costly method of just having a local mirror for updates. Surely you don't do all your updating by hand where you care how long it takes to download the files. And if your local box starts mirroring new updates a little after midnight, it should be finished mirroring well before the 4am yum updates start. Could someone please explain to me how using BitTorrent is so much better than having a local mirror?
