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Date:      Thu, 4 Apr 2002 13:14:23 -0500
From:      The Anarcat <anarcat@anarcat.dyndns.org>
To:        Mikhail Teterin <mi@aldan.algebra.com>
Cc:        jhb@FreeBSD.org, imp@village.org, des@ofug.org, pst@pst.org, obrien@FreeBSD.org, cvs-committers@FreeBSD.org, cvs-all@FreeBSD.org, winter@jurai.net, jkh@winston.freebsd.org, rwatson@FreeBSD.org
Subject:   Re: cvs commit: src/usr.sbin/sysinstall install.c installUpgrade
Message-ID:  <20020404181423.GB279@lenny.anarcat.dyndns.org>
In-Reply-To: <200204041754.g34HsNnF005867@aldan.algebra.com>
References:  <XFMail.20020404093657.jhb@FreeBSD.org> <200204041754.g34HsNnF005867@aldan.algebra.com>

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[this should be taken to -libh or -arch]

On Thu Apr 04, 2002 at 12:54:22PM -0500, Mikhail Teterin wrote:
> On  4 Apr, John Baldwin wrote:
> =20
> >> A package is, typicly, downloaded or found on a CD -- in both cases
> >> the file can be seeked around. IMHO, in this case space should be
> >> given priority in the eternal "time vs. space" argument.
>=20
> > In the case of a fat package you wouldn't actually download the parts
> > of the package you didn't need if you got the package via a bitstream
> > that you could seek on.
>=20
> Well, when installation is from a CD or other such media, your argument
> is lost -- I already have the seekable file. So, it seems, the new
> design is addressing installations over the network.

No, it's not lost. A 200Mb package on a CD can take quite a while to
read. If it's indexed, you can not only seek only the parts you need,
but you also don't need to extract the package to a temporary location
and copy it again to install it.

Indexed packages might take up more space on a CD, but regardless of
the network connection, it should speed up package installs a 2-fold
at least.
=20
> My trouble is, when anything goes wrong during an install, it is
> restarted, which means redownloading (at least parts of) the package
> file, does it not? To avoid that with the present packages I'd tend to
> download them and then install them -- hence, I have the seekable file
> anyway, and can redo the installations later on this machine or others
> without redownloading. In other words, I'll have the seek-able file
> anyway...

I'm sure I understand what you mean by seekable. Some network
connections (HTTP 1.1 and FTP, IIRC) are seekable, ie you can start
downloading http files at any given location.

The problem is with non-seekable (non-indexed would be the proper
word) archives. For .tgz (or .tbz2), wether you have the seekable file
or network connection doesn't matter since you must extract the whole
file in the order to seek individual files in the archive.

Repeat after me: there's no way to access a given individual file in a
tar(1) archive without extracting the archive up to the given file.

This is not the case of .zip.

> What's left are the people, who like to install directly from the
> network and don't mind redownloading in case of a failure. My
> guesstimate is those are not big in number and mostly don't care for the
> method chosen one way or the other...

Choosing an index archive format doesn't mean you can't keep a local
copy, and actually, right now, libh does keep a copy of the .zip
locally, as a temporary, yes, but that is a simple toggle.
=20
> >> And I suspect, those who disagree are simply blinded by their
> >> blazingly fast connections and fat disks. :-)
>=20
> > No, the fact is that we have thought about some of the problems the
> > current scheme doesn't address and which you haven't apparently
> > thought about how to address either.
>=20
> Mmm, sounds familiar :( Can you explain, what those are, or point me to
> the mail archive, where this was discussed?

I can point you to the libh design document on /projects/libh.html.

A.
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