On Tue, 5 Jan 1999, H. Peter Anvin wrote:
>>> I believe this. I have been encouraging the official mirrors to
>>> use rsync rather than FTP, which tends to be more resistant to
>>> these kinds of problems.
>> The package I use to do the mirroring is actually called "mirror"
>> and is a set of PERL scripts...
> Yes, it uses FTP and has a set of a known problems.
Ah...in that case, could you advise me re them please? I'd certainly
prefer to avoid unnecessary problems...
>>>> Incidentally, the SunSITE-UK mirror carries all files in the
>>>> mirrored directories, but it appears that ftp.kernel.org isn't
>>>> that consistant about the compressor it uses. As an example,
>>>> whilst it has both .gz and .bz2 versions of many of the kernels,
>>>> a large number of the 0.xx kernels are only provided in .Z
>>>> format.
>>> That is because gzip wasn't around back then. ftp.kernel.org
>>> doesn't use any compressor per se...
>> That's what gets me - 0.01 is provided in gz and bz2 format, as is
>> 0.12, but the rest of the 0.xx series are mainly only provided in
>> .Z format...
> Because the 0.01 tarball isn't original.
>>> ...although there is a script around which converts .gz -> .bz2
>>> automagically. .Z files aren't seen by this script.
>> Perhaps they should be added - after all, gunzip handles .Z as
>> well as .gz archives...
> Not enough benefit, I don't think.
I've just checked, and the main bunch of .Z or .z (both are present)
files on ftp.kernel.org are the ones in Historic/v0.99 where there are
12 kernel archives totalling just over 10 Megs, so an average of just
under a meg each, plus a further 9 patch files at around 50k each.
I agree that there's little benefit to be gained from converting the
patch files, but the kernel archives are on my site converted to bz2
in which form they're around 450k each, so roughly half the size of
the .Z or .z versions...
Overall, you'd gain around 5 Megs of disk space converting that bunch
to .bz2 format, and probably around 3.25 Megs converting them to .gz
format, which probably isn't worth it as you say...
Best wishes from Riley.
--- * ftp://ps.cus.umist.ac.uk/pub/rhw/Linux * http://ps.cus.umist.ac.uk/~rhw/kernel.versions.html
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