Hi, I work on Metalink, which tries to make downloads more reliable by describing mirrors and checksums for download programs. One way to do this is with Metalink/XML, another is with the Link header, Instance Digests, and ETags [1]. It seems like it would be nice to be able to have ETag policies coordinated across the mirror network, that is have them based on the same attributes on all mirrors. We want them based on the file (size, date modified, or checksum etc) and not server-unique filesystem metadata. Then we could use If-Match to detect early on if the files were the same. http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.2/mod/core.html#fileetag says the default is FileETag INode MTime Size where we probably want FileETag MTime Size I'm wondering why INode needs to be in there? If the default was the second (assuming that's correct) and that's how Apache behaved when installed, then all the mirrors would share the same ETag and you can do neat things with that. The problem is, it's hard to get mirrors to make changes (Fedora, openSUSE, but I'm sure it's most open source mirror networks). Some mirrors just silently mirror don't even know to do anything else. I know the Apache mirrors had trouble getting in sync with the instructions on http://www.apache.org/info/how-to-mirror.html -- (( Anthony Bryan ... Metalink [ http://www.metalinker.org ] )) Easier, More Reliable, Self Healing Downloads [1] http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-bryan-metalinkhttp --------------------------------------------------------------------- The official User-To-User support forum of the Apache HTTP Server Project. See <URL:http://httpd.apache.org/userslist.html> for more info. To unsubscribe, e-mail: users-unsubscribe@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx " from the digest: users-digest-unsubscribe@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx For additional commands, e-mail: users-help@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
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