Re: us.kernel.org mirroring inconsistency

H. Peter Anvin (hpa@transmeta.com)
4 Jan 1999 20:00:21 GMT

Followup to: <Pine.LNX.3.96.990103173804.12831A-100000@ps.cus.umist.ac.uk>
By author: Riley Williams <rhw@bigfoot.com>
In newsgroup: linux.dev.kernel
>
> One thing I don't like is when files on the mirror get corrupted or
> only partially downloaded. As far as I can tell, there appears to be
> problems with some of the mirroring packages, or alternatively with
> the server at ftp.kernel.org when it's used by mirroring software,
> which result in the mirror getting a corrupted copy of some files.
>
> Don't laugh: A similar problem existed at one time with one of the
> sites I mirror, and was due to a bug in the ftpd server at the remote
> end. The bug was only activated by mirroring software, not by the
> manual ftp sessions, because it only took effect when commands came in
> at the sort of speed common with mirroring software - maybe you can
> type a dozen or so commands per second, but few other people can...

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.

> 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, although there is a script around which
converts .gz -> .bz2 automagically. .Z files aren't seen by this
script.

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