Skip site navigation (1)Skip section navigation (2)
Date:      Sun, 13 Oct 2002 14:49:22 -0700
From:      Terry Lambert <tlambert2@mindspring.com>
To:        Giorgos Keramidas <keramida@ceid.upatras.gr>
Cc:        current@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: HEADS UP: Old port recompiles needed (Re: Unknown symbol "__sF")
Message-ID:  <3DA9EA62.D337E8A0@mindspring.com>
References:  <20021013194319.7A31D2A88D@canning.wemm.org> <3DA9D95D.C1319A72@mindspring.com> <20021013205915.GK10829@hades.hell.gr>

next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
Giorgos Keramidas wrote:
> On 2002-10-13 13:36, Terry Lambert <tlambert2@mindspring.com> wrote:
> > I had upgraded the machine with a snapshot from the Japan snapshot
> > image server; apparently, no one ever thinks of compressiong ISO's,
> > so that was at the limit of what I could download.  8-(.
> >
> > It may be a good idea to put this flag in by default, at least until
> > 5.0-RELEASE, so that it will be there on the snapshots.
> 
> That's a commonly asked question, and a very good answer is in the FAQ :P
> There are good reasons why the overworked snapshot servers do not
> attempt to compress the ISO images, which btw contain mostly .tgz files.

Alternately, instead of believing someone's opinion, we could ask
the data in question:

% ls -l
248643584 Sep 17 00:03 5.0-CURRENT-20020917-JPSNAP.iso
212988130 Oct 13 10:39 5.0-CURRENT-20020917-JPSNAP.iso.gz

Compression gets rid of about 36MB.

That's 3.4 hours saved on a 28.8K modem download time, overall...
a 14% reduction in size.

I guess it's no wonder it's a frequently asked question.  Too bad
it's not answered correctly in the FAQ.

I think the correct answer is maybe "because the FAQ maintainers
have broadband connections"...


PS: If the server is overworked, all you need to do is store the
compressed version of the image on the server; I have no idea why
you seem to believe that it needs to be compressed more than once,
so whether or not the server is "overworked" is irrelevent to the
compression, I think.

PPS: If the server is overworked, think what reducing the number
of bytes per download by 14% would do for it.

-- Terry

To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org
with "unsubscribe freebsd-current" in the body of the message




Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?3DA9EA62.D337E8A0>