Slashdot Mirror
Snag the Red Hat 9 ISOs, via Cash or BitTorrent
Tectonic Rumblings
Every so often a new tool comes along that causes a shift from Bronze to Iron, that divides history into "before" and "after." The peer-to-peer world has certainly seen its share. Those who used 486s to encode and play MP3s remember it wasn't just abysmal modem speeds that kept people from casual trading, but the tiresome process of finding users and content; Napster freed us from that bondage, letting the computer do the heavy lifting and freeing people to do what they do best.
When the weaknesses began to show in Napster's overly centralized model, Gnutella stepped in with a distributed, decentralized network. Audiogalaxy gave us astounding variety (even the most obscure music could always be found sooner or later) and a rich sense of community that is still sorely missed. WinMX offered the ability to connect to multiple Napster-compatible networks; with the advent of multi-source downloading, Morpheus and similar programs allowed us to rise above the limitations of slow upstream (until it's hard now to find any P2P applications that don't use it); and EDonkey added the nice touch of being able to share files before they were done downloading.
So what's the next stage of P2P evolution?
Enter BitTorrent -- a "swarming, scatter and gather" file transfer protocol developed by Bram Cohen that's taking the net by storm. Even without a friendly, unified interface, BT's ability to scale in the face of overwhelming demand while minimizing the free rider problem ("leeching") has attracted a flood of new users. But as with any tool, understanding how and why it works will always make using it easier and more fun.
All technical references are taken from the BT server tutorial and the official documentation.
Let's Start with the Basics
BitTorrent is not a 'website' or a 'network', and strictly speaking is not even a program -- it's a protocol with a number of functional implementations.
Instead of jumping right into downloading, first we'll discuss how files are served. Most new BT users are familiar with going to a website and clicking on links to .torrent files, but this just provides a friendlier interface and isn't actually necessary. All you really need to serve is a public Internet machine. The "tracker" will "keep track" of who is connected and who has which pieces of the file(s) in question. Like any public Internet service, a static IP address and/or valid hostname will make it easier for people to connect to your tracker.
To start serving, you choose a file or directory to serve and run a program which generates a .torrent file. This contains a 'hash,' which serves as a checksum to ensure the file is the same on all systems, as well as the address of a tracker. A typical .torrent file is quite small, typically 5-50k in size.
The second step is to load the .torrent file into a BT client. The client asks you where to save the file, you point it at the existing and complete copy, it verifies that the file hash matches, says the download is done and sits there uploading when necessary until you cancel it.
Here's an animated graphic (.mng, currently viewable only in Mozilla) of a torrent transfer.
Getting Started
The official BT client is available for Win32, Mac OS X, as an unstable Debian package, and as Python source code.
Getting started is quite simple; the Windows installer asks no questions and provides no options, and the only behind-the-scenes addition is that Internet Explorer now launches BT when you click on links to .torrent files. (Mozilla users will need to edit Preferences, Navigator, Helper Applications and add the mime type "application/x-bittorrent", to be launched by the btdownloadprefetched executable.) You can also download .torrent files and load them locally without going through a website.
Once the .torrent has been invoked, the client will prompt you for a location to save the file to. The client then creates a file of the appropriate size containing all zeros, and connects to the tracker to get a starting list of some random subset of available peers (other users connected to the 'swarm'). BT then starts connecting to peers and downloading random chunks of the file, and begin uploading to other peers as soon as you have enough for it to bother.
Every time your client verifies another piece of the download, it tells the tracker it has a good copy of that piece. By directly utilizing each user's outgoing bandwidth, downloads can be generally be completed very quickly while minimizing the load on the original server, in effect turning the dreaded "Slashdot Effect" against itself -- the more who want to download, the more there are to upload. Sooner or later (usually sooner), the download is done, and the client continues to upload pieces to other users.
What's In It For Me?
Now your first instinct at this point might be to close the program, but you really ought to leave it open as long as possible afterward, to help seed the file into the network. But this is really a social and cultural issue which can't necessarily be addressed through technical measures; BT can enforce fairness during the transfer with its algorithms, but no software can force the user to keep the client open. Many tracker owners keep a close eye on such things, and will generally ban repeat offenders. In any event, "giving back" your bandwidth has never been easier, even for users behind firewalls or NAT (although as always, being able to avoid or go through these will make the transfers more efficient).
Alternative Clients and Other Tools
That said, there are perfectly valid reasons to want some control over the amount of bandwidth a P2P application uses, and an experimental, unofficial client (Win32, Python source) has been created to provide a friendly interface for this. BT will automatically adjust your download speed appropriately if you set a slower upload speed, but it's still an invaluable tool for some cable and DSL users whose downloads will choke and abort if they use too much upstream, or for anyone with limited upstream who wants to reserve some of it for other uses.
Currently, both the official and experimental GUI clients use a separate window for each transfer. BT++ (Win32, Python source) has made an initial attempt at combining all transfers into one window, as well as offering some other enhancements, but users report mixed results, with some saying "it works for me" and others that it's buggy to the point of unusable; still, it's one to keep an eye on. (Caveat: BT++ provides an option to automatically stop uploading when the download is completed. I believe this deliberately encourages people to do so even if there is no real need to do so, and would advise anyone using BT++ to refrain from using this option; it's unnecessary, detrimental to the BT networks, and may lead to your IP being banned as described above.)
TorrentSpy (Win32) is another useful tool that shows various statistics about your transfers, including which files of a multi-file torrent are complete. It's not meant to replace a downloading client, but to complement it.
I should add that the speed and time-to-completion numbers may not be wholly accurate, and will typically fluctuate wildly to some extent during a transfer. (After all, do you believe Windows when it tells you how long it will take to copy a file?) The "percentage completed" at least is accurate, and you may be able to get more accurate information using TorrentSpy. A new version of BT has just been released (3.2) and its reported changes include "more even and consistent download rates".
A Few Miscellaneous Points
It's quite possible to generate .torrents for files you want to serve and then advertise them on someone else's tracker. Since anyone can run a tracker, BT is more like IRC, Usenet or Direct Connect than something like Kazaa. Like Freenet, it works best if the content is highly in demand; it's also more effective on recently released stuff. One highly recommeded website is Bstark. It doesn't provide .torrents for anyone to download, but functions as a "metatracker", that is, a tracker that keeps track of trackers. If you're a statistics geek, the graphs are a lot of fun, and even for the average user it's a simple way to check what files are most in demand and most in need of someone to serve them. This is even more effective when you combine it with an alternate means of communication such as IRC or email, making it easy for users to check supply and meet demand. The .torrent file can also be distributed by any means, be it a website, IRC channel, email attachments or perhaps carrier pigeon.
Conclusion
With the 'entertainment industry' finally focusing their attention on IRC, the cantankerous and difficult granddaddy of Internet file sharing, BitTorrent has found a niche and filled it admirably. The author understandably wishes to focus upon using BT in a legal manner. As with any new invention, "the street finds its own use for technology," and BitTorrent will undoubtedly continue to be rapidly adopted for both licit and illicit use.
Given the decentralized nature of BT networks and the rapid development of new tools, it's only a matter of time before someone writes a GUI wrapper for an IRC client, web browser and all-in-one BitTorrent interface. After all, Napster did it, as do most other mainstream P2P apps like Kazaa. Like Direct Connect with its 'hubs,' there will always be multiple BT servers available, and a unified interface would not only make it easier for users to find and download content, but free them to focus on forming the social and cultural networks that are also needed. A website typically uses far too much CPU and bandwidth to handle popular traffic, but a BT tracker uses minimal bandwidth by itself. Perhaps the next-generation clients will try to automatically locate trackers, or help the user find and serve older content as well as new releases.
The late great Audiogalaxy had many strengths, but one of its most fundamental was the sense of community it encouraged. BitTorrent wisely fills a narrow set of technical requirements, leaving a great deal to human need and will. The ad hoc arrangements and customs that have so far sprouted as expressions of the will to fill these needs are often chaotic and messy -- but that's human action for you.
I remember when 8.0 came out, it was days before I could find a mirror that didn't already have too many users connected. I think it is a great idea to use p2p to to distribute it.
The best way to help Open Source Companies (a la RedHat) survive is to circumvent their income strategies!
Tell RedHat to screw off! Circumvent the subscription policy with P2P!
Is that a bullethole in your foot?
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
Red Hat must be in serious trouble if they couldn't afford the .0 to append to the 9!
Estimated time left: 75 hours 25 minutes 35 seconds
:(
Current download rate: 3 kB/s
Current upload rate: 35 kB/s
Seems to be some sort of bottleneck
Is it available at any FTP mirrors yet?
Have you been stalked by Seth today?
pirating linux isos....
"Slashdot provides free BitTorrent stress test/load analysis"
You are not the customer.
Correct me if I've got the facts wrong. But it sounds to me like a week long wait is not really long, and that this announcement in Slashdot is not really ethical ...
so how do you install bittorrent in a few simple steps on RH 7.3, which having to download / install tons of extra packages?
This is a welcome to change to the usual copy/paste from the linked articles we usually get. This is so decent it's alomst as useful as the time that guy posted the step-by-step on Gentoo that was so good I went home and installed on the spare PC. Bravo!
Otherwise I'm glad to see the P2P community keeping pace (or should I say, one step ahead of) with the best in file serving. I'm not sure that RedHat would be pleased about it, but it was bound to happen that the ISOs would be released back to the community in record time regardless of paid subscriptions. In the end, I think they'll find it difficult to release anything without the inevitable leaks. This seems to hold true for Microsoft as well, as they contend with leak after leak of their beta and developer images. Information wants to be free!!
When will this crowd catch on to Direct Connect? Talk about non-leeching - in some hubs you have to share a minimum of 60 GB+ just to join. Yes that means those hubs average over 60GB/user. Nothing else even comes close.
It would seem to me that RedHat didn't fully think out the bandwidth hit they would take. I've got a colleague (who is an RHN subscriber too) that just had all his downloads (discs 1-3) timeout. I gave up trying to start downloads this morning. I personally think, Akamai would have been a better solution.
RedHat is a business. Business want to make money. The community support this. So therefore we get rid of their revenue streams by getting what will be free in a week now and stopping potential subscribers?
Rus
Cheap UK and US VPS
I personally ponied up my 60 bucks, but then again I also go out and buy boxed copies.
-B
Ash and Hickory, straight-grained and true, make excellent bludgeons, dandy for the cudgeling of vegetarians.
Strange how all the distro's hit version 9 around the same time :)
I've been using bittorrent to download mpegs of television shows that haven't been produced to VHS or DVD; Invader Zim, Kids In The Hall ... in the month or so that I've been using it, the biggest problem has clearly been people whom have dropped off after downloading the content.
How could one prevent this from happening? I can only see banning by IP as the only way.
Right now it's 12:50 P.M. MST and I've been downloading RH9 with BitTorrent now for about 22 minutes (three ISO files) on my Comcast cable connection. My download speeds vary between 100 KB/s and 200 KB/s, and the estimated time to go is 2 hours and 40 minutes. Hows that for performance?
Were slashdot subscribers not presented with this spam? Or were they forced to read this advertisement as well?
So ok. You can get it with Bit Torrent, you can get it off of the FTP if you are a member. But what the heck is it? All I've seen about Red Hat 9 is that it's out. What are the new features? Anything cool/not-cool. I just recently got 8.0 and was expecting the usual RH path of 8.1 and 8.2 before the next version. Anyone using 9 currently?
and will never do so again. in the course of downloading a single 140mb file, win2k-sp3 dumped physical memory 4 times. when i closed BT, the problem went away.
Oddly enough most software is out there on P2P networks, just some people are prepared not to be anally skinflintish/hypocritical - ie. slashdot saying pirate a copy of RH linux.
Either cmdertaco's mate coded this new system and wants new users, or slashdot has just fallen a few more points in credibility...
Why all the effort? There have already been a couple of reviews out on 9 and it looks like it's nothing more than a little gloss over what can be had with 8. And frankly, 8 is ok, but I'm feeling my relationship is over with RedHat.
I have been slowly, over the past year or so, warming up more and more to Gentoo. Today, in fact, I'm re-installing one of my home servers with Gentoo 1.4 because I just want it the way I want it. Gentoo is shaping up to be a great distro and if you love the days of getting your hands dirty in the depth of things, then you should give it a whirl. Altho it may not be worth it to everyone, there is something to be said about a blazingly fast distro that's tailored to your machine.
Plus, portage smokes rpm - in fact, the BSD ports was one thing I really missed with Linux. Now, it's the best of both worlds.
lest see,
first they were pissed off about copy machines,
then the internet,
then centralized p2p like napster,
then decentralized p2p,
now this - they surely must be peeing in their pants by now. When are just going to get it over with and decalre copyrights are dead.
Is it running any faster now, after 15 minutes or so? My download rates shortly after the Slashdot story went live were around 5-7 K/s. Since then it's been steadily increasing -- presumably as more and more Slashdot readers download, install and run BitTorrent, providing more clients for me to connect to. I'm now up to 25-30 K/s, which is roughly the same as my upload speed.
Now, instead of the slashdotting the RedHat FTP sites and mirrors, the BitTorrent web site (the site distributing the client) will get the onslaught of RedHatters in search of the latest version...
:-)
Alls well from my perspective, though -- I have already installed the BitTorrent client and have the new ISO's! As such, go nuts...
n2q
Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy. -- Benjamin Franklin
Comment removed based on user account deletion
The protocol is nice and I use it quite a bit, but it suffers from the fact that you need to find the .torrent files before you can use it. This to me is a point of failure that should be avoided. Why isn't it possible for a client/tracker to share the torrent files themselves as part of the overall transaction?
While people may want to hide what torrents they have, this could go a long way to eliminate the problem.
Ok, I just installed the client and started the download. I'm running on a Speakeasy DSL connection.
Current status:
Estimated time left: 116 hour 30 min 37 sec
Download rate: 0 kB/s
Upload rate: 13 kB/s
It's like slogging through distributed mud!
Hey, great article, ololiuhqui. Now I have a question: how exactly would you pronounce 'ololiuhqui'? :-)
The Official Steve Ballmer Webpage
Can anyone point me to some (p)reviews or at least lists of new features, etc?
(.mng, currently viewable only in Mozilla)
Get real. It's certainly viewable (animations and all) in MS' IE. I know IS is not free (as in speech), but FUD (or ignorance) about it hurts just as much as anything else.
when the download is complete!
Bittorent works by making everyone who downloads part of the "distribution network." By leaving the client open you are making the download go faster for everyone. I suppose this is kind of a utilitatian concept, but hey.. Slashdot readers are supposed to be idealistic, right? I'll leave mine open, and hopefully you will too.
:wq
try using a IPv6 mirror, as not many people yet use IPv6 most IPv6 mirrors have some free slots.
quote: "Here's an animated graphic (.mng, currently viewable only in Mozilla) of a torrent transfer."
Just to point out, the .mng works just find under Konqueror 3.1.0.
For more information on MNG, and a list of supported browsers, follow this link
I've been using BitTorrent lately to download lossless recordings of Phish concerts. Each concert is usually about 1GB in size and the transfer rates have been superb. It will start off slowly, but pick up steam once you download parts of the fileset that others have already downloaded. A few hours later and I can burn 3 CDs worth of live music. Excelsior!
...until my Uni mirror will have it and send it to me at 10Mbit (what's in the wall). If I was more desperate than that, I'd pay :)
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
I am a Red Hat subscriber and I am pushing a measly 14 kb/sec to download three 600+ MB ISOs. I'm on ISO #1 with 9 hours to go!
So what exactly is the advantage of getting the distro a week ahead of everyone else when the servers for "subscriber use" are so overloaded it will take me a week to download it!?!
On all of my VIA chipset athlons, whenever I try the BitTorrent client I am guaranteed a hard crash or a bluescreen within ten minutes. The error messages are different, but always imply a hardware error. Yet burn-in tests and local LAN filetransfers can run for days without any problem.
Flaw in Win2K SP3's net stack? Probably. It shouldn't even be possible for a user application to cause a bluescreen. I don't blame BitTorrent directly but I do wish that someone would hunt down the cause and find a workaround. Until then, I'll get my releases days later from Kazaa Lite, just like everyone else...
_This_ explains why RHN has been so crappy today. The sendmail update is available through RHN up2date today, and the servers have been slammed, it's been cutting off my connection. It seems likely that it's from the RH9 load. Crap!
"When are just going to get it over with and decalre copyrights are dead."
As soon as you acknowledge that your core philosophy is "I want everything to be free, regardless of the consequences to others, or myself". Deal?
What's significantly diff. from RH 8.0.
I have a Linux distro that works with most of my H/W including firewire, usb, printer etc.
Sould I upgrade, apart from KDE 3.1, Gnome 2,2 and X 4.2 whats new. ? I already have KDE 3.1, I dont use gnome , whats diff in X 4.2 and 4.3 that can be useful. I have heard 4.3 allows to change resoultion on the fly, but i dont care for that.
so is it worth the efforts.
for the last time people, I am "frodo from middle eaRTH", not "middle eaST".
I find it ridiculous that the loudest linux/open source zealots in here refuse to pay to support it. Open source programmers deserve to be paid too. Put your money where your mouth is. And yes, for the record, I've paid for every version of RH since 6.x, and I even paid for Debian once. :)
Let the flames begin.
On the one hand, BitTorrent is an excellent way of reducing bandwidth for Open Source companies... if they release their files only on bittorrent, then they can get the distro out to more people & save money on bandwidth at the same time. In that regard, I think all Linux distro companies should adopt it.
On the other hand, this is a massive leak for RedHat... if BitTorrent can always be relied upon to get the ISOs the day they're released to subscribers, then there is no incentive to become a RedHat subscriber... and thus RedHat loses money.
In the future, it would be nice if BitTorrent users could wait until after the distro is released to the public before mirroring it... Yeah, then companies like RedHat still get their 1 week advance for subscribers, AND they get to not have their servers flooded on public release day.
*sigh*... I better go buy a RH9 boxed set, I feel all dirty now.
I'm a subscriber to RHN.I don't particularly care about $60 a year, and quite happily paid it a few months ago. For the privilege of being a subscriber I now have access to a server that is providing me an ISO at the estimated rate of one every 48 hours, and thus can anticipate downloading the 6 ISO set in 12 days.
That'll give me a huge advantage over the non-subscribers who have to wait a week before they can access fast mirrors. Err...
I don't see it so much as an ethical issue (after all, the isos in question contain gpl'ed programs), but the hypocrisy of a company that is trying to make a subscription service work actively undermining a 'friendly' company's subscription model. Perhaps we can figure out a way to use bittorrent or some other proxy to get the 'early-bird' stories only available to slashdot subscribers..
So long, and thanks for all the Phish
I really have tried to find the answer to this on the BitTorrent site.... What's the precise relationship between download and upload speeds? Is download speed limited to a function of upload? For awhile, I was getting both 40k down and up on my 1.5/384 DSL line, but it's since changed to about 80k down. Just curious.... I'm getting about 2k from Red Hat's servers, so no complaining here.
(Yes, I'm a RHN subscriber, I like to help the cause.)
I think it's an animated gif...at least that's what it says on the page...
Your approach sucked but your message was damm funny and true to some extent.
*Fortitudo, aequitas, fidelitas.*
And anyhow, RH 9 actually does include something much more than "a little gloss" - NPTL (warning - link is to a pdf)
Now if you've ever tried to debug a core file of a multi-threaded app, or dealt with signal propagation with the old... aw, shucks never mind, but take my word for it, NPTL - woot woot
Oh, woot woot BT too by the looks of things...
Don't know why this was posted, but seems to be a good time to ask this...
.torrent files with btdownloadprefetched). Anyone know why this is?
In my experience Mozilla opens files of the form filename.extension.torrent (like rh9.iso.torrent) with bittorrent, but opens files of the form filename.torrent (like rh9.torrent) as text (even when set to open
Mozilla opens the former with bittorrent out of the box, BTW--no MIME type setting needed.
http://entropymine.com/jason/mng4ie/
RHN is all about easy updates. I would suggest you try it sometime.
Downloading the ISO's is hardly discouraging RHN subscriptions.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
If Bittorrent _doesn't_ upload when behind NAT, could this be causing the download bottleneck?
- since Slashdotters are highly likely to be behind NAT?
A blog I run for the wealth
too big for me.
Why doesn't Red Hat release it to stores 1 or 2 weeks before, that way the elite early adopters can finacially support them.
I realize that you are being sarcastic, but I don't think RH relies on the sales of their single-user products to make much money.
There is more money to be made in support contracts and RH enterprise products, which is why RedHat is pushing products like their RH Advanced Server.
And I say more power to them. If RedHat keeps making money, the benefits will trickle down to the rest of the OSS movement.
I'll be getting my RH9.0 via Cheapbytes without much guilt. For $12, it's cheaper to buy it through them then to wait for the damn ISOs to download, even with this fancy-dancy new protocol; and spend the time burning them onto CD, etc.
"Can of worms? The can is open... the worms are everywhere."
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Bittorrent and Edonkey seem pretty similar as far as the feature of making chunks available for uploading while still downloading. But Bittorrent lacks the ability to search for files which seems to give Edonkey a huge advantage.
Since this topic is as much about BitTorrent as it is about RH 9.0, how can I easily create a BitTorrent server? Can I do it on a webserver?
No USB DSL modem driver == no crash!
Who cares about the future anyway? We want it yesterday, and we want it free! /me sighs.
People will pass up steak once a week, for crap every day.
It seems like it is just a clone of the eDonkey/Overnet protocol... nothing new here...
BitTorrent, in my experience, is significantly less centralized. E-Donkey is a P2P file sharing program. BitTorrent is a protocol...
The solution is obvious, distribute BitTorrent via BitTorrent and Slashdotting wouldn't be a problem.
Wait a minute...
Here's an animated graphic (.mng, currently viewable only in Mozilla) of a torrent transfer.
.mngs just fine. :)
I can testify that Opera 7.03 also displays and animates
A friend and I decided that we believe in Red Hat enough to put our money down. Once a year I pay what I call my "red hat tax" by buying a boxed distro of Red Hat, usually the personal version for ~30 bucks. I purchased RH8 a few weeks ago, even though I had burned copies already. I've done this since RH 5.1 (my first linux). I have not subscribed to RHN, but I've considered it. I know the GPL says I don't have to buy the software, but I do it because it's good for Red Hat, and therefore it's good for Linux. That said, if I can find a mirror for 9 I'll grab it today. And sometime in the coming year, I'll pay for another distro. I do understand the need for revenue.
I have not purchased a Windows version since '98.
As soon as you acknowledge that your core philosophy is "I want everything to be free, regardless of the consequences to others, or myself". Deal?
No Deal. I never said that I wanted everyone elses physical properties for free, so don't go arround touting bullshit property rights and expect me to worship them on just because so many others are dumb enought to believe it. That has consequences too you know.
and is very similar to something i thought of 2 years ago and never finished. Obviously, there are small improvements that can be made such as allow the sharing of a file previously downloaded when the user downloads a new file - but this would require a new mode or persistent tracking through an always on client (in todays world of spyware, that wouldn't be a surprise).
As for the ethical questions regarding RH9, i'm sure anything that decreases bandwidth loads for Red Hat can't be that bad. I'm pretty sure they are already saturated and their only consolation to subscribers is that they have two viable options of getting it: from them and through bit torrent. Redhat could have utilized an online registry to prevent people who aren't subscribers to use the install early (time check maybe). I'm sure if they really didn't want non-subscribers getting it early, they would have put in some sort of security. In reality, it's just a perk to their subscribers to get it a little earlier and from less hammered ftp's.
---- The geek shall inherit the Earth.
So right now everybody is going ahead with full speed and installs a software seemingly written by one person and not reviewed by anyone else. And the download page tells everybody to poke holes in the firewall as well.
Hmmm. I hope all of you have considered the involved security risks carefully.
-- kryps
Here's a forward of an email I've sent earlier, which should please some Red Hat Linux desktop users. The sylpheed packages have been updated (the problem worked around), and the ALSA kernel modules are on their way!
Matthias
From: Matthias Saou
To: RPM-List
Subject: Red Hat Linux 9 freshrpms packages
Date: Mon, 31 Mar 2003 16:11:33 +0200
Hi all,
;-) :-( ;-)) :-)
Red Hat Linux 9 is here, and so are the new freshrpms.net packages!
Of course, as the main distribution is only currenty available to RHN
subscribers, the "os" and "updates" apt/yum modules aren't avaible yet, and
won't be until the release actually hits the stores and public ftp servers,
which should happen one week from now.
The new website is:
http://shrike.freshrpms.net/
All relevant parts of freshrpms.net and apt.freshrpms.net have been (or are soon going to be) updated to reflect the change.
New stuff: (*IMPORTANT*)
- The apt server is now http://ayo.freshrpms.net/ and the paths no longer
include "en". For the info, "ayo" stands for "apt, yum and others"
- All files are also available through yum, although no yum package for
Red Hat Linux 9 is currently available from freshrpms.net (soon!). See
http://www.dulug.duke.edu/yum/ for more.
- Some packages have had their non-relevant epoch value removed. These
may be problematic if you decide to upgrade your system instead of
performing a complete reinstall. The affected packages are:
- apg
- anjuta
- blackbox (but was 0 anyway)
- gentoo
- gkrellm
- gkrellm-plugins
- gkrellm-themes
- gtktalog
- i8kutils
- libdvdcss
- ltris
- proftpd
- subtitleripper
- xine
The only packages with epoch set are the ones that need it in order to
keep upgradability with older Red Hat packages.
- The ALSA kernel modules don't work with the default Red Hat 9 kernel, so
until a solution is available, no ALSA
- The mjpegtools won't recompile, so transcode is currently built without
mjpeg support (required for (S)VCD IIRC).
- The sylpheed and sylpheed-claws packages don't seem to recompile with SSL
and produce include errors (krb5 from openssl) that I also have on
YellowDog Linux 3.0, I'll dig into that. For now, the 8.0 binary
packages should work fine.
- A few packages now compile again in their latest version, most notably
the screem web editor and the totem xine/gtk2 player.
For the impatient ones, remember that signing up with RHN will allow you to
support Red Hat, which is still providing us with a great (my favorite
GNU/Linux distribution! For the others, only one week left to go... and...
have you considered subscribing to RHN?
That's all for now, please report back to me any eventual problems, but
most of all... have fun!
Matthias
Interestingly enough, Gentoo's portage system has BitTorrent in it already if you want to play with it. Then again, if you are running Gentoo, I very much doubt you want to get RH 9.
-Frums
Thanks to you and bramcohen for the answers. I figured it wasn't an obvious thing like 2:1. In practice, it seems to work pretty well, because I'm pushing about 75% of both download and upload speeds. Now if only I knew firewalling well enough to change packet priorities like the AC suggested....
Compusa alread has the retail version on the shelves. Just bought my copy yesterday. Shocked to that it was on the shelves when you cannot even order it from Redhat.
The only software Red Hat could legally release under a "turns into GPL after a week" license is software solely written by their employees. Are there any Red Hat packages at all that don't even accept large patches from outside contributors?
Yeah. Except that my bittorrent session tops at anemic 10kB/s download speed and averages around 1-2 kB/s. I have no problem reaching my full DSL bandwidth of 1.5Mb/s when dowloading from linuxiso.org. Maybe it's a great idea but I don't see how this is any improvement (at least to me).
Please don't flame me for trying to sell something on slashdot. At $7.50/DVD, after figuring in media costs and shipping (and the fact that it takes 1.5 hours to burn a DVD), I'm definitely not going to make any money. :) I'm just doing this because I know people are interested.
This seems to fight against leaching but I found myself downloading at 7k and uploading at 55k. It doesn't really do its job eh?
I don't understand why this wasn't just a story about BitTorrent. BT is an awesome P2P network. Unlike most networks, it works perfectly most of the time. Don't use it to get Redhat tho, there are better things. =)
-------
"In times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act."
-- George Orwell
Does Debian Woody support it? I need to find a new distribution for a critical server before Redhat drops support for 7.3 in December.
Using BitTorrent to distribute content such as Linux ISO's is great step foward in legitimizing and making good use of P2P.
I've been using BitTorrent for a few months now, and it does what it's suppost to do wonderfully. The true strength of BitTorrent is that you aren't really on a network, so there is limited network traffic. (Where Gnutella1 and other such networks can ussually can be pretty big on). Also, the Partial File Sharing it uses works how it's suppost to work. Your uploading the file your downloading, always. Not so on eMule or other networks that have PFS, where even though your downloading the file you may not be uploading it because your busy uploading other files. This is the problem with PFS on other networks. (Which I hope they address soon, I'm helping Shareaza to address it).
Another stregth of BitTorrent is that the network spec is so simple, so I could see the many different client applications being developed around it. In addition, the BitTorrent application is rather simple, as the article above suggests, to where you just install it and it "seems" to work seamlessly with IE or your other browser. So users don't have to tinker around with network settings and other crap.
Now, the weakenesses. BitTorrent is not really decentralized. (It's like eMule) There is not one global network. You have to download the torrent file and then connect to a server which regulates traffic (connects you to other users downloading that file). This means that server can be taken down (or Ddos'd - like pretty much all popular BitTorrent spots, like this one, are being now) or overloaded, or go down (and then your tranfer is screwed).
Another weakness of BitTorrent is that after you download your file, and after you close the tranfer, your not sharing the file anymore. So you just downloaded the file and stopped sharing it. This often causes problems on BitTorrent circles (and I would say it's biggest problem) to where people need other users to "re-seed" the file, or re-open the file on the network so users can download segments they didn't complete. So, in theory, only popular torrents work. If you have a website where you place your home-made MP3's up for download, via BitTorrent, and only a few people download them, then you'll have to "seed" that torrent forever, because the users downloading them stop sharing them by default after they finish the transfer. (Though users are encouraged to keep the torrent open for hours after they finish, to help the network). Also, larger files work better. Smaller files, since they finish faster, are often downloaded and finished before other users can join the "swarm circle".
Anyways, in conclusion, I wouldn't call "BitTorrent" the "next generation" as the article makes it out to be. It has it's strenths and weaknesses. Other networks, such as Gnutella2, are evolving with better distribution systems to match the functionality of BitTorrent. And since the files you download on these servents are shared indefinately by default, it doesn't "share" some of the flaws of BitTorrent's system.
What you've described (connect to a few different index servers, break all your files into chunks, start offering to upload chunks as soon as they're downloaded before the rest of the file even finishes) sounds just like the system that mldonkey (and eDonkey, and probably a bunch of other compatible clients) uses. Are there any significant advantages to your protocol?
or try to Save Image As...
"Here's an animated graphic (.mng, currently viewable only in Mozilla) of a torrent transfer."
:)
Not quite, Opera 7.03 seems to handle it well
Here's an animated graphic (.mng, currently viewable only in Mozilla) of a torrent transfer.
.gif, not an mng.
Uhh.. it worked fine for me in IE6. Not only that, but the graphic was a
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
Okay, as a user that never runs a gui on the machine, only ever goes in via ssh over the local intranet, and has a cluster of servers all behind a hardware firewall that blocks all incoming attempts...
What is different about RedHat 9.0 that is applicable to me?
I'm just curious if I should bother with upgrading or not - I would guess no since I can just download any one particular thing that I want/need.
The one thing that I can think of justifying it would be that I'd like a working lm_sensors. The existing lm_sensors that it came with for me didn't have anything for my motherboard (epox 8kmm+). I'll admit it - I tried installing lm_sensors on my own and couldn't do it successfully (so much for "following the instructions").
So were there some way that was RetardEasy to get that in... ie "upgrading" - then I'd go for it.
Otherwise, it is just another big number jump in a short period of time that I'm not sure has any real bearing on me - yet leaves me curiously watching all those about me rush to get it.. wondering... why?
There are some odd things afoot now, in the Villa Straylight.
I laud this effort. Here's my situation: We pay for the rhn service at work. I attempt to download the 3 iso's, and I get combined download speeds of 22kB/s. This is unacceptable. I'm using BitTorrent right now, and the speed is 1900kB/s, and rising. The machine is on a 100mb/s switch, on MIT network, so I'll probably get 3mB/s before the download finishes.
This is an example of a legal use of p2p technology directly benefitting a valid user.
Do you see the sig? Do you have it in your sights? Why yes, Miss Moneypenny...
if Microsoft was free most of the people here would be switching to it right now.
I wouldn't switch to Microsoft's crap even if was free or they paid me to switch.
I pay for linux distros, and have no problem with those who don't.
Yeah, We do have to support our favorite(s) distro(es) [Red Hat, Slack, ...]
I've never ever purchased a MS Windows OS. I'm proud of it. :)
I guess Red Hat is a nice Windows-killer :D
There are currently 1168 people connected and 11 more have the complete file. The total bandwith used is currently 390Mb/s.
Anyone download the RH iso's and get a blank MD5sum file? Mine's blank, so if you can please post the SUMS, thanks.
------
Random, useless fact: I type in startx entirely with my left hand.
It is similar, in that it is a swarming protocol. It has some major differences, though, some of which you might not consider advantageous. It can only share one file (or a set of files) at a time. It is meant to be orchestrated by an entity which distributes the .torrent definition files. There is no search function; it is just a file transfer protocol.
This makes it ideal for the distribution of legitimate content where usual methods would swamp servers or cost too much for bandwidth. And while it can be used for piracy, it really isn't meant for that.
Gotta love it. 29KBps upstream, 0 KBps downstream, and I only have a few bytes worth of valid data. Oh yeah, she scales real well. Hehe. Oh well. 78hours is still sooner than 1 week + fight for FTP time. I should probably restart with an upload cap though. My poor 256k sync here at work isn't liking the flooded upstream too much. ;)
I have the same problem as the other guy who replied to you: I started out at like 70K/s down and up, now after about 25 minutes, I'm at 1K/s down and 45 up. Speeds do vary (of course), but my download is hovering in the single digits. I even see 0K/s from time to time. I opened port 6881, but I don't think it's helping.
BitTorrent sounds like a good concept, but I'm getting all three ISOs concurrently at around 14K/s (each) using curl. I don't think I'll bother with BT much more if speeds don't increase.
-B
Ash and Hickory, straight-grained and true, make excellent bludgeons, dandy for the cudgeling of vegetarians.
FREE SOFTWARE DOESN'T MEAN NO FINACIAL COST. Free software means free intellectual access.
And the worst place for this kind of two facedness is these types of forums where in one series of posts you will see people screaming death to MicroCrap (TM) and in the next post they whine about Redhat charging. If you REALLY want to see Microsoft go down try putting your money where your fingers type.
(Disclaimer: To all those people out there who have paid for Linux software at least once in your life, or supported a distro finacially please ignore this rant. This is for all the annoying little pissants who think they have a God given right to free stuff.)
It take more faith to believe in evolution than it takes to believe in God
Fantastic. You can now use a beta quality windoze client to download RH9.0
I think I'll wait until RH9.0 hits the ftp mirrors then go and trash my box with anything as lame as windoze.
What is slashdot coming to?
Does D/L equal the speed of the U/L? I have a downstream of 1.5mbs my up is 128k.
So does this mean my down will be at 128k as well. While I know its not fair for me to take more than I give, what can I say Im American.
If you have a Linksys network card, some P2P applications may cause the network driver to bluescreen Win2k. For me it was Shareaza - it could stay up for about 5 minutes before the system bluescreened. The crash was always in the file "ndis.sys" - this is the network driver, not the P2P application. With the Linksys it's a combination of non-robust firmware and buggy drivers.
It's been a known problem with Linksys network cards that the company has largely been ignoring. Search for "ndis.sys bluescreen" as well.
The solution is to replace your Linksys (or other brand) card. I replaced mine with an Intel one that I had lying around - and all my problems vanished instantly. Needless to say, I don't think I'll be buying Linksys network cards again. I don't want to trust my data to such shoddy hardware, you shouldn't either.
I've got a download of the source ISOs going from RHN, but it looks like it will take more than a week to complete, whereas I'm getting >200 KB/s download and >100 KB/s upload with BitTorrent.
Basically, you should check MD5 checksums, or better yet, GPG signatures, if you're going to download a .iso from a P2P network instead of getting it from an official mirror site.
You should check them anyway, even when you get them from an official mirror, IMHO.
Oh, no! You have walked into the slavering fangs of a lurking grue!
No, really. I'm serious. There were some problems with the name server.
As of this post, there are >1300 people downloading, and things seem to be scaling fine. The tracker ought to be able to handle at least 6000 clients.
...unless, of course, you count Debian's version as x^2...
I just downloaded BitTorrent (RHN is downloading really slow, ATM) and it appears to be just one big file. Does this file contain the ISO images in it, or will I not be able to burn this to CD once it's done?
Life has many choices. Eternity has two. What's yours?
I'm one of the losers that has payed for a rhn subscription. I say I'm a looser because I've payed for a subscription just for the "special" ISO access and now I'm watching my high speed connection download the first ISO at 4.7 Kps. At this rate I should have the ISOs downloaded by the end of week when they distribute to the rest of the mirrors.
For only $60 per year you can download have the nostalgia of using a modem again. What a deal!
Bitter and pissed off!
Seems peculiar that when offering people downloads of the latest RedHat (and Mandrake) that you wouldn't provide RPMs of the client.
Anyone got a lead on this? There are links to some Mandrake packages on rpmfind but they don't work.
BitTorrent works pretty damn good!
Even with the load that the network must be under, I am getting 50kB/s down and 25kB/s up, which isn't too bad for my connection.
So where can I get the ISO files for SuSE? Seems like a smarter way to deal with overloaded Redhat servers.
The internal mirror at work here had these ISO's two weeks ago. They're timestamped March 14, 2003.
:)
I guess RedHat likes us better
I have never downloaded anything so quickly. I started out at 50kB/s, and now am at 533kB/s and have 59% of the total (RH dist). What a marvelous technology.
Imagine if all updates, iso's, etc were distributed this way... The more people want it, the better it goes. Critical updates get to you near instantaneously.
That is REAL value, RH seriously needs to consider implementing this into their system.
I will probably have to contribute to their/his cause.
Guess what? I got a fever! And the only prescription.. is more cowbell!
>>Last I heard, the redhat cds contained proprietary software.
>That's not true, and has never been true.
Yes they did. For example, Redhat 4.x shipped with a commercial X server, Metro X and BRU backup tool. They also had a distribution which included Motif development libraries, as well as a secondary product line which included just the runtime libs as well as the runtime and development libs. Redhat 5.x continued shipping Metro X, but not BRU if I remember correctly. This policy was primarily a response to Caldera's bundling commercial software with the original Candera Network Desktop and Caldera OpenLinux productline. Not that Redhat Linux does bundle commercial software with the product - I haven't seen it so I can't comment on that. However, Redhat most certainly did bundle commercial applications with their product line at one point in time. --M
I use Gentoo, I use Red Hat. Both are Linux.
Why are we bitching? I though the whole idea was that Linux was good, not that one type of Linux was better than another.
I think the fight should be Linux vs the other OS's, like Windows and Unixes, and not this Linux distribution vs another. Lighten up, everyone.
Bit torrent sounds like the first sensible P2P I've read about.
:-) Prehaps /. could use it for mirroring?
All the intelligence is at the ends
The bandwidth auto configures, the more who want it the more connections there are
Open protocol, easy to implement
I'm off to get my copy
Is anyone else noticing their BitTorrent downstream to be VERY slow? I'm uploading at over 150k/s, but downstream is only going 15k/s after over 30 minutes of transferring (so it's not the slow ramp up that someone mentioned previously.)
Why should I want to use this as opposed to a downstream-only FTP where I can get 10x the speed?
working fine here. I just started the torrent a few minutes ago and:
Download rate: 455 kB/s
Upload rate: 582 kB/s
perhaps the bottleneck is at your end?
Stats from my bittorrent window right now: Download rate: 267 kB/s Upload rate: 279 kB/s so obviously there's some sort of problem on your end. Did you read the readme ? are your upload ports open ?
ed2k://|file|[redhat9]shrike-i386-disc1.iso|668991 488|56416177d0e94b0b049351b57c1d3b50|l e|[redhat9]shrike-i386-disc2.iso|677511 168|0fe869000b1fee1cbd963750fb5c7a06|l e|[redhat9]shrike-i386-disc3.iso|508592 128|16499bcab44d40010b4af5ac9c460cf5|l e|[redhat9]shrike-i386-disc4.iso|637763 584|16ff442c969047817ba5946eea78a3fd|l e|[redhat9]shrike-i386-disc5.iso|676686 964|56b6447eb8441ece9e57506c644c0f13|l e|[redhat9]shrike-i386-disc6.iso|445153 280|fca976e5e07d08998b59fd39dbb63c1e|
ed2k://|fi
ed2k://|fi
ed2k://|fi
ed2k://|fi
ed2k://|fi
i use bit torrent alot to get my tv shows off the web really easily. My only problem is that i have ti use wine and the windows version. Even though it is an open source project and the python code is provided, it is a real pain use the linux client (really big too)
too bad he didnt make something like wget so that it could be stuck into apps like kget
The war with islam is a war on the beast
The war on terror is a war for peace
The CompUSA Store in Indianapolis (Castleton) had RH9.0 Standard ($39.99), and Pro available on the shelf yesterday. Thought it was strange that you could buy it off the shelf, before you could get it by subscription...
Nothing is wrong with Red Hat or Gentoo. Both are destributions that have qualities attracting different groups of people.
.5 is that the maintainers ask the users to SHUT THE FUCK UP on boards/ng/IRC and let the distro itself gain popularity on its merits.
Red Hat gets the curious new users as well as the seasoned user who doesn't want to dick around with a computer to get things done.
Gentoo gets people that are really interested in getting the "best" out of their machine and putting the effort and time to acheive it. The sad thing is that some of their users are huge loud mouths that pollute discussion threads with posts the add up to little more than, "I use gentoo. I am a better and smarter computer user. Give up DistroX head on over to gentoo.org and try it out."
You could look at that statement in a variety of ways. Most (myself included) see it as an arrogant self defeating troll. If they want to get the word out on Gentoo maybe they should try writing articles for various websites (this would be the best route since most articles I've seen written about gentoo has been rather positive. Most of the time the only cons listed is compile time) or start gentoo support sites. If there was one thing that I could ask for Gentoo 1.4 or even
I've heard something like this somewhere. :0)
Here's an animated graphic (.mng, currently viewable only in Mozilla) of a torrent transfer.
.mngs show up just fine in IE. Png's and mng's have worked fine in recent versions of IE for several years now, and only have a problem when you install quicktime which thinks it needs to hijack the png formats because they are "mac picture formats" in the qt installer.
That is a blatant lie. The
Has anyone tried to use IP multicasting for this sort of software distribution? It seems like it would offer a significant saving in bandwidth costs, because the server would only be transmitting one copy of the data at a time. The technical challenges (file reassembly, lost packets, authentication, etc) shouldn't be too hard to solve, and an application like this might encourage ISPs to provide better multicast routing.
Semantics is the gravity of abstraction
Yes, you are correct about the gpl - but not it's application in this respect. No one is saying it's illegal to redistribute - just that is may be immoral. Look, all RedHat is doing is try to make a buck by asking people to pay if they want it a week early. This is no way confilcts with the gpl.
Strange that people seem to be so religious about all the details of the GPL, except when it might hurt RedHat, in which case it's okay for them to sell it like proprietary software.
Once again - you are wrong. Redhat is not trying to circumvent the gpl at all. Just trying to make some cash. All we are saying "hey, if you want it now - pay for it - otherwise wait a week."
FWIW - I haven't used RedHat for 2 years - but they did help me get started into linux.
Personally its not God I dislike, its his fan club I cant stand (bash.org)
Umm...I've used BitTorrent twice to download RH9 isos and the checksums don't match up with what RH provides (I'm a RHN subscriber, and like everyone else have seen the slowness at RH site).
Anyone have a clue to what's up with the checksums???
That should be "revenue stream?" at the end there...
Oh yeah... Right now, the RH9 ISOs are being distributed via BitTorrent at over a gigabit per second. Even Akamai would have to stretch a little to source that kind of bandwidth.
I seem to recall some of the early 6.x series distros shipping with non-freely-distributable stuff like Acrobat Reader and game demos also. But none of that wound up on Red Hat's FTP site for people to download and was clearly labeled as non-distributable, IIRC. And, I think the "Advanced Server" stuff they sell also has proprietary stuff alongside the regular distro discs. But the important thing is that the stuff you and I can download off Red Hat's site is free to redistribute and likely always will be.
Ita erat quando hic adveni.
I downloaded Knoppix yesterday night using BitTorrent. The speed was great, I was really impressed. When completed, BitTorrent reported sucess.
But... the checksum was bad. BitTorrent didn't warned me of anything. I don't know what happened, is it the original iso that was bad or is it a BitTorrent bug? BitTorrent should at least have a way to protect the integrity of the file in case an evil node contaminates the pool...
I will try BitTorrent again because I think it's a great idea. Maybe it's just not mature yet.
you'll get your ISOs before paid subscribers. I am downloading them from RHN right now at whooping 3-10 KB/sec.
anyone know of a good review of RH9? I mean, after installing 8 so recently, why should I upgrade?
Is it available at any FTP mirrors yet?
8 6/
Yeah, it seems to be:
ftp://ftp.multi.fi/pub/redhat/linux/9.0/en/iso/i3
Download rate ~560KB/s at the moment...
I use Debian GNU/Linux on PPC (Macintosh Hardware) so RH 9 matters not to me.
However, after seeing more and more of their money grubbing ways (AS,ES and the other subscription income methods they have started lately) I downloaded bit torrent and the RH 9 ISOs to a spare box and plan to leave it up and running all week. It's on a dedicated 100Mbit ethernet line. Take that... RH Marketing bastards!
I can remember when RH used to be fun, when it used to be for the community... those days are long gone. RH 9 will be EOL w/i no time. Why withold it from loyal users at all? Power to the people... that's what FREE software is all about. Thank you RMS! Thank you!!!
I bought my copy from CompUSA on Thursday of last week.
You can still see remains of them putting it on their online site here. Notice that the vendors available for software are Microsoft and RedHat. They have since corrected this blunder buy taking the products off this section.
I have been running RedHat 9 on my Laptop (Dell Latitude C840) without issue. Just a small problem with wireless cards not working that worked in RedHat 8.0 (aka LinkSys WPC11 Version 3)
The flyer inside the box telling you you need to apply errata for initscripts is rather nice. To bad RedHat didn't make it available on their updates.redhat.com ftp site yet.
The program isn't debugged until the last user is dead.
See, guys, there's always spyware in this P2P stuff ;-)
I am sure you will feel much better as you are working for that $300 dollars and I am drinking a toast to all those hard working people who keep the software companies in business.
:)
Here's to you buddy, because if sheep didnt buy the software, they would stop developing it.
No I didnt spell check this post...
Children, Children, Children. Can't we all get along? Linux has it's uses (mostly for advanced users who know the difference between RAM and getting rammed) and Windows has it's (joo noob).
blah, blah, blah
I think this could help with the FreeNet 'speed' issue. Is anyone listening here?
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
In fact, I'd bet most have free, or nearly free, copies of everything Microsoft produces, either pirated or cheap $15 copies from university stores.
Money has almost nothing to do with it. Free copies of GNU/Linux distros are nice, but I'd bet top dollar most GNU/Linux users have paid full price for a distro at least once.
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
I tried the Bit Torrent download, it worked fairly well. But I decided to cancel the transfer because it was 3 ISO's in one transfer! Personally, I'd prefer separate downloads for each ISO, especially since the latter disks are usually optional (or at least they used to be!). Ah well. Maybe next time.
When the weaknesses began to show in Napster's overly centralized model, Gnutella stepped in with a distributed, decentralized network.
The only weeknesses in Napster's model were legal. BitTorrent uses a model nearly identical to Napsters.
The "tracker" is akin to a Napster server that provides clients with a list of users who have a pariticular file. Sure they added a couple nice features like multi-source downloading, multiple file via single torrent and uploading before a complete download, but the network model is the same.
The world is neither black nor white nor good nor evil, only many shades of CowboyNeal.
There is a FAR BETTER way:
.debs and apt-get, people could "apt-get dist-upgrade" their systems to the latest - and only update the packages they got installed, rather than a stack of CD images. Probably a 200-300MB download as opposed to a couple of 650MB iso's.
.iso's to subscribers whenever they liked - and then at a later stage open the apt repositories to the rest. Many would prefer to wait for apt, rather than download massive iso files.
If Red Hat used
Red Hat could release
Yeah, it's buried way down in the body of the article, but it's still there. w00t! I'm the guy that wrote TorrentSpy. The web site that the link points to is running on my PC at home on cable 'net access. 300 hits in 3 hours. Not too bad so far, I guess. My gf is gonna kill me if I get slashdotted, tho. There are worse ways to go, I guess ...
I've had several people express interest in an *nix version of TSpy. It's written in Delphi, which theoretically means it shouldn't be too hard to port over to Kylix. If anyone has Kylix experience and would like to help out, feel free to contact me at the email on my web site.
I'm gonna go tail -f my log file and listen to my network bog down.
Hey, I'd LOVE to see a C version of the program. Please feel free to rewrite it. You can grab the source at http://sourceforge.net/projects/bittorrent/.
And I'd have to disagree that Python is as bad as Java. I will admit, it isn't as low-level as C, but it's nowhere near as annoying as Java can get.
Check out this site, for TV episodes through BitTorrent. Did you miss the latest Simpsons episode? What about Smallville? Well, just download them!
This brings up a point about BitTorrent. It is great for popular recent files, with a file size greater than 100MB. For smaller, or more rare, or older files, use one of the other P2P technologies.
Damn, you're right!!!! Slashdot has became a non-sense RedHat-boycotter just because they make the most sucessuful distro. They have became the no1 in Linux playing fair. Not like Microsoft. Support the GOOD work of your favorite OS (Linux/*BSD) www.redhat.com www.slackware.com www.freebsd.org
The client from Debian/unstable seems to require quite a lot of CPU (40% of an Athlon XP at 1.2 GHz, downloading around 5 Mbit/s and uploading 14 Mbit/s).
Python is probably the bottleneck. What's your experience with other clients?
Thousands hacked after a trojan copy of Red Hat was placed on a bitTorrent site.
Make sure you check the MD5, people!
There is an MD5 available somewhere, isn't there?
Unfortunately, partly due to the main use of p2p being to share content that some people dont want you to have without paying (call it pirated material if you will, but I digress), some of us are pretty much forced to limit our upstream traffic, as it it carefully monitored to detect any use of p2p tools results in immediate disconnection. (Somehow I doubt they would differentiate between using bittorrent to get the latest redhat, and using it to get the latest movie - the terms state p2p is prohibited because it causes network saturation (allowing would mean everyone downloading/uplading gigs/day in the eyes of those who make the rules), and servers in general are prohibited (it is a university network, and the intent is to prevent the like of DHCP servers taking everything out, but in practise it can apply to anything)).
:)
Granted, bittorrent is a great solution, and I have used it many times on occasion, but I don't think it should replace anoymous ftp servers.
Then again, I'm running debian, so I guess it doesnt really matter.
A couple months ago I got an email from someone working on that project asking if I could help test their servers by linking a video from my page.
I had to write the back and explain that I didn't get anywhere near the traffic levels they would have needed in order to perform a useful test. Ah well.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Actually, what Red Hat can do is what other Open Source companies have done. They can copyright the CD itself, and distribute the source / binaries on an FTP server that make it difficult to obtain and actually use. OpenBSD and SuSE are two examples... You cannot download official ISOs for these distros.
I know someone will probably be quick to point out they have limited exposure, but Red Hat may end up taking this strategy if they can't derive any revenues from their work any other way.
Stop and think for a second how much more difficult with would be to set up a Linux system with out their tools before you decide not to buy a copy of their CDs or pay for RHN. Not hard? Then why are you downloading them? How about downloading Debian instead? Or brewing your own distro?
Check out the list of packages included with Red Hat Linux 9. You'll find exactly zero non-free software.
Only because you brought the subject up:
"pine 4.44 A commonly used, MIME compliant mail and news reader." This code is source-available, but licensed under proprietary terms (no right to fork).
In pointing out this inclusion of the proprietary pine/pico/pilot package, I intend no criticism of Red Hat Software, Inc., which does it for perfectly understandable reason, given the pine MUA's wide appeal and lack of an open-source replacement acceptable to that customer base that doesn't suffer the same copyright encumbrance (as MANA does). Chris Allegretta's "nano" has nicely eliminated the pico problem, but ditching pine itself without seriously ticking off a fair number of people remains difficult.
When I saw that Red Hat had (by the 8.0 release) reduced the number of proprietary packages to just this one -- having pushed the envelope in jettisoning the old proprietary Java packages, ditched Navigator/Communicator in favour of Mozilla and Acrobat Reader in favour of xpdf, and actually helped write a replacement for xv -- I was (and remain) quite impressed. They've shown impressive leadership, in this area.
But it remains a (small) factual error to claim that the distribution is 100% free / open-source software.
Rick Moen
rick@linuxmafia.com
People seem to forget that not everyone has infinite bandwidth; I pay for my bandwidth, so leaving a P2P client open to run up a few hundred dollars on my bill is not an option.
Since 7.0 3 disks have been required.
If you're a home user with dsl this is a very common problem. It's not just BitTorrent, you may notice that if you are running a fserve on irc that uploads are killing your download speed.
If you're a windows user get the experimental BitTorrent client at http://ei.kefro.st/projects/btclient and set the upload rate way down, then be polite and set it back up when you're done downloading.
If you are a linux user get wondershaper from http://lartc.org/wondershaper. This site also has an explanation of why dsl users have this problem sometimes.
Altough bittorrent is a very nice program, it seems this particular torrent wasn't released in a very smart way. The reason the early downloaders had problems with slow downloads was a lack of seeds - download speeds are, obviously, dependent on the number of uploaders. If you don't have a very fat pipe a very popular torrent like this needs to be announced in stages: first on smaller forums and IRC channels and then, when you have a dozen (or in the extreme case of a slashdotting, maybe 30 or so) people sharing the whole file, then you announce it to the general public. This way you avoid having 300 clients trying to download from the same poor guy with a shitty cable modem connection.
The reason I prefer BT over eDonkey or Magnet is the straight-forward nature of the system. When you want one particular file without any extra bother with of setting up a complex client BT is ideal (also, the hashing method used by eDonkey tends to bog down my system in a nasty way). The extreme simplicity of the client also makes it well suited for use by non-geek users: You just click the link, choose the download directory in a standard filepicker and you're done - just like a http download. This makes it ideal for non-scene use - imagine a game maker distrubuting demos and patches with this system, for instance. No more fruitlessly searching for a working mirror and waiting in an endless fileplanet queue on release day.
That isn't to say BT is the end-all of P2P - far from it. If you want to distrubute files <10MB you probably don't want to use BT. Torrents also tend to be shortlived, altough a different interface might change this. (It's to easy to absent-mindedly close the client when it's finished like you do with a normal download dialog.) For more general use a more complex interface like DC/Kazaa/Gnutella/etc is better. BT does one thing and does it well - something slashdotters tend to appreciate.
The only thing BT really needs know is a better interface for making your own torrents. The excisting CLI tools tend to be off-putting to Windows users.
File integrity checks are slim and none on most P2P networks, but even if I have an MD5/SHA-1, I won't know until I've downloaded 700mb and would have to download 700mb again because I don't know what's corrupt. From what I understand of BitTorrent, it has the chunk hashes in the .torrent file, so if you have a credible source of that, you'll weed out corrupt parts very fast, both idiots as well as people trying to poison the download. Of course, now if you'd integrate it with a PGP sig, and a trusted list of your own choosing, it would be even better.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
I'm using MDK9.1, I've editted /etc/mailcap with the proper info, I'm running Python 2.2 but I keep getting an error about not having wxPython installed. I downloaded the src.rpm and installed it and MDK tells me it's already there.
Anyone know any better install directions besides the ones that came in the README?
Thanks
That means I have to wait 61 hours for it to finish downloading, all the time hoping Windows doesn't crash... what are the chances of THAT happening?
That most internet connections aren't symetrical? What about people on connections with 4mbit downstream, but only 120kbit upstream? Should they really be limited to downloading at 12KB/s?
Once BitTorrent solves the problem about jacking up my bandwidth bill, and only running at the speed of my upstream, maybe I'll consider it. Until then, it's useless and expensive. Downloading RH9 off BitTorrent will cost me more than subscribing to RHN!!!
I have never seen anything cheap in a university bookstore. Even the coffee cups are $25 with student discount!
CAn'T CompreHend SARcaSm?
What am I supposed to do with the .ext file once it finishes downloading?
Is it a BZ2 or Gziped tarball that I just untar, or something else?
True, this is an exception. However, while I was wrong, my response was not in that the original poster was.... head ... spinning.
What I meant to say is that the orignal claim that you could not go copying Red Hat 9 CDs because all of the software was not of the sort that you could just go copying around is simply not true. Red Hat 9 is free in that sense. It's not free in the sense that OSI requires.
Interesting that Red Hat is not exactly open source (when installed in full) because of software I've been building from freely downloaded source for years.... heh.
Good catch.
My connection has a 608kbit download rate but only a 128kbit upload. My ADSL service is designed for downloading from powerful servers and NOT uploading huge amounts of data myself. So am i just screwed with BitTorrent?
unzip; strip; touch; finger; mount; fsck; more; yes; unmount; sleep
Is there any scope for distributed web page serving? That'd kill the Slashdot effect dead in one fell swoop. But wait... where's the fun in that? ;)
I don't know if I totally agree with what RedHat is doing with the "consumer" releases but releasing this 1 week early for paying customers doesn't really bug me too much. Posting an article that promotes "bypassing" this restriction bugs me a "bunch". Maybe one of the paying Slashdot customers will write a program that displays the Slashdot that they see so we all can see it (without paying.)
So RedHat looks like the Microsoft of the Linux world. They're still on "our side" so to speak. Sure, they would actually like to make a buck. More power to them.
Where's the "Search for Audio" button?
If your theory is different from practice, then your theory is wrong.
The part that worries me is what happens if a major security patch comes out in the next few days? It sure would suck to download a big patch from redhat while the ISO release is taking all their bandwidth?
What are we going to do tonight Brain?
While I think bittorrent is a good idea, the fact that I've been sitting here over half an hour just trying to satisfy the stupid wxpython dependancies. Please, if a tool is to be well used, it needs to not require tis much work to install.
I do security
This is interesting ... until there's a search method for bittorrent files, it's basically only useful when a public source is being overloaded all at the same time -- as in the case of releasing a bunch of new ISOs. This is an application of P2P that directly solves a problem for big websites, and doesn't help file sharers much at all.
Go figure.
311 kB/s download speed, 154kB/s upload. Suspect that I might take some flack from the network admins tomorrow for shunting 3Gig or so accross their network overnight, but what the hell.
"The new wave is not value-added; it's garbage-subtracted" - Esther Dyson, Dec 1994
There is a lot of complaints saying that this use of bittorrent for downloading brand-new redhat ISOs is somehow piracy or immoral. I disagree. Before RedHat and the rest of the commercial linux distibutions came along, there was Linux. There was GNU. There were plenty of people writing software, protocols, architecture, doing support and configuration for free. RedHat and the others realized this had value, and that in spite of it being free they could make money at it. They knew the risks they were taking, and went forth anyhow. Has the difficulty of downloading new versions of Red Hat contributed to some sales growth of RH? Yes. Have others (cheapbytes, etc) profited by selling copies of RH? yes. Will RH sales go down because of BitTorrent distribution? If so, probably not very much. RH has much bigger things to worry about: The SCO suit against IBM, Dealing with Sun dropping their own distribution and what it means to RH, Mandrakesoft, competition from MCSE training and support vendors branching into Linux, etc.
One thing that all linux vendors want is more use of their distributions, and linux as a whole, by the populace. Linux still has a very small market share, and anything that helps improve this market share is good for all the companies involved. This is called taking the long view. RH should know this, as others have. To do what they've done, and survive in this economic downturn of catastrophic porportions, seems to indicate they have a bit of business clue, unlike many in this field. More power to them, but I am not going to buy their CDs. I am a Debian user and Slackware before that, but I am very interested in seeing what RedHat has done.
Hint to RH: make cheap, DVD based offical RedHat available everywhere. With DVD drives $20 these days, there's a huge market out there.
Only 170 hours to go(1K/S download, 15K/S upload). Actually it will be quite cool...We're just on the wrong end of the adoption curve at the moment
Even as far back as 4.1 (when I started using Red Hat) they kept the commercial software on separate CDs, which made the legalities of redistribution as simple as "you can redistribute anything and everything on disks 1 and 2, but little or nothing on disk 3".
> If Redhat want's to restrict distribution, they can go write their own kernel, C compiler, X, and all the applications.
Or they could just not release binaries. People would still compile it and resell it, but most I think most people would go for the official copy.
I've paid (well, ok, I've had my organization pay) for RHN for two years (on 3 May). I think this will be our last. I have always had better luck (quickly) getting new releases from mirrors than from RHN. Today is a good case in point. I went to get RH9, and was getting 1.5KB/sec! I was being quoted 180+ hours to get each disc. This wasn't a bandwidth limitation on my end (we've got an under-used OC-3 connection). I tried BitTorrent, and had my .iso's in a couple of hours. I even ponied up $5 to the author.
This is quite nice. I downloaded the rh 9 ISOs in about an hour on my work's 10 Mb/sec line and now it's uploading at 600kB/s. This is a great way to get something out everywhere quickly, and my work's line is almost dead during off hours anyway and they aren't charged for excess bandwidth, so megabits not used are lost forever...
Grab a copy of the latest version (.5.2) of BT++. It seems to do a better job of downloading for me. Especially after limitting upload speed (joys of asynch cable modem during peak time). If you have limitted upload bandwdith, this can speed your download speed up a lot. Just be sure and stay on afterward to give back that bandwidth to others.
Also, be sure to poke a hole in your NAT/firewall in port 6881. It definitely speeds up the downloads!
Portable versions of Firefox, GIMP, LibreOffice, etc
Microsoft products are crap no matter what the cost or license.
I like their mice and they have an excellent warranty and customer service. At least two of my optical mice have had the wires in the cord break where they enter the mouse body. Somewhat easy to fix with a soldering iron but MS will send a replacement mouse at absolutely no cost.
I just got a free MS optical notebook mouse which rocks! Nice short cord so no excess slack, same sweet little scroll wheel, and of course optical so it works on the leather arm of my chair.
Good stuff.
And pine is currently listed as "deprecated" - so it won't be there much longer.
Bandwidth isn't exactly cheap. By making people who want it in the first week pay, they are probably just breaking even over the long haul of downloads.
Red Hat makes its money through support, box sets (really support), and possibly training. Nobody really makes money off of download. Bandwidth isn't that cheap.
CitrusTV (http://www.citrustv.net): the Nation's Oldest & Largest Entirely Student-Run Television Station
My ADSL service is designed for downloading from powerful servers and NOT uploading huge amounts of data myself.
Tough shit.
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
"I'm vaklempt....
Talk amongst yourselves....
I'll give you a file...
Here, you've got segment 1, you got segment 2....
Talk amongst yourselves...."
SHH... dont let Mike of Gnutella II know.... or else he'll hijack the protocol and call it Gnutella9...
If you dont like what I am saying, well then why dont you +++ATH0
connections go much better when you aren't using ALL of your upload. try to set the max upload to -10KB/s of you max like...
./btdownloadcurses.py --max_upload_rate 40 --url http://the.redhatisos.com/rh9.torrent
so with my 50KB/s max upload
$ screen
and everything is so much nicer. i don't know how to do the same on windows(tm) so... die!
-- "Put on your big girl panties and lift!"
is, somehow, availability.
I see no point on subscribing to RedHat Network because:
1. I don live in the USA.
2. My bandwidth is a phone connection with supposed 56 kbps, so I wouldnt see much of an improvement there.
I would like to go out and buy a RH box if only it was available in a store near my place....
Right now, the only way I have access to linux is through friends that can rip a (couple of) cd for me.
errera hunamum ets
Hmmm....
Did you notice that you have to use Mozilla to view the graphics that describe how a plugin for IE works?
Anybody find that just a bit ironic?
(Yeah, you can get the source, but how the !@# do you install that for Moz on *nix?)
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
Look, the fact of the matter is that Red Hat was creating a value-added service. As others have noted above, they're only required to provide access to the source, nothing more. The fact that they distribute ISO's is a kindness to the community. I started a Red Hat Network subscription last week for three reasons: to get the general RHN services, to support Red Hat and the work they do, and to get my ISO's early.
Now if I turn around and distribute them via P2P or BitTorrent (or anyone else does), I have no problem with that at all. That's the nature of the beast & perfectly legal, AFAIK. What I do have a problem with is Jaime posting this bullshit. Here's the problems:
1) This is a P2P story. It doesn't have shit to do with Red Hat, except that they're the ones getting fucked. Wrong category.
2) The tone of the story is "sticking-it-to-the-man". While, I understand frustrations of that nature when we're talking about the shitheads at the RIAA or MPAA, what's Red Hat done wrong here? Come up with an innovative value-added service for paying members of the community? How Fucking Dare They!!!
3) By Jamie posting this trash, Slashdot is engaging in the sort of shit-where-you-sleep behavior that we've come to expect from big corporations, not members and supporters of the Open Source community versus each other. If the point was to highlight BitTorrent, fine - post it as a P2P article and show how we can all download the newest Mandrake ISO's that just came out quickly. Instead we got, "Red Hat won't let us have it for a week without paying! Fuck 'em!"
4) I am now pissed about the fact that I paid all that money for something that had a major incentive destroyed. Not pissed enough to wish I hadn't done it, and certainly not pissed at Red Hat. But what do you think Red Hat's response will be to the paying customers who do complain to them? It'll be either: tough shit/we're getting rid of it, we're going to come up with some kinda product activation, or we're going to give ISO's to only the paying members and source to anyone else. None of these except the second would solve this problem, but all would suck.
We all laughed about the 1)Open Source 2)??? 3)Profit! jokes for quite a while. Red Hat is one of the few companies out there making it work & coming up with new ways to make it work. Slashdot destroyed a piece of that today in a rather childish way. Thanks!
"soapboxing" v. pej. To announce the development of a new Internet protocol with proportionate fanfare, and then to watch it grind to a halt within hours."
11.03pm:
Estimated time left: connecting to peers
Download rate: 0 kB/s
Upload rate: 0 kB/s
2.47am:
Estimated time left: connecting to peers
Download rate: 0 kB/s
Upload rate: 0 kB/s
Hmmmm.
"It's not your information. It's information about you" - John Ford, Vice President, Equifax
This morning, RHN was unavailable for a few hours. Could not even get the login prompt. Only some unhelpful message that they were sorry for the inconvienience.
Once I finally got in, there were no iso links. Only the release notes. That's it.
An hour after that, the site was sloooow but the links were finally there. I've been attempting to download the isos all day long at a snail pace - so slow in fact, that the boxes will show up on the shelves before I have all three isos.
Also, resuming simply doesn't work too well with their links. Some of the downloads had to resume and guess what! The links have expired. That's nice.
Overall I have to say that the pre-release for subscribers was a good idea, but so poorly executed. They're lucky that I joined RHN a while back and not for their isos. It seems like they hyped the pre-release thing to get people to subscribe and then found out they simply don't have the bandwidth.
I am downloading with BitTorrent eventhough I am a RHN subscriber (and RHAT stock owner). No remorse.
And yes, I left my client running...
-B
Ash and Hickory, straight-grained and true, make excellent bludgeons, dandy for the cudgeling of vegetarians.
...you cannot copyright a CD layout. It is by nature functional and necessary (a computer needs a mechanism to find the files). Being able to copyright this would be akin to copyrighting a phone book, which the phone companies tried to do and which the courts said they cannot do.
I'm not saying it's a good/bad thing to redistribute official OpenBSD CDs but there is no reason why you can't, and this is the dumbest, flimsiest excuse ever for trying to make a profit with an open source product. It's as stupid as saying "FREE...just pay $30 shipping and handling" or "Lemonade free, cups $1"
Dont you understand what i just said? This is my exact problem. My upload speed barely gets to 10KB a second. This is nothing at all to work with. If i use any of it my download speed goes too slow. Im sory but my connection is not designed to work as a server.
unzip; strip; touch; finger; mount; fsck; more; yes; unmount; sleep
Interesting that you can't run BitTorrent on RedHat 7.x to download a newer copy of RH (8.0 does have Python 2.x so it should work, but I never had any luck running with RH8.0.). For that matter you can't use Debian unless you like using packages from testing.
Sounds like a "Windows" focused product to me.
Democrat delenda est
If you subscribe just to get that 1 week jump on non-subscribers then you are wasting your money. The rush of people trying to pull down ISOs kept my download between 1 kbps and 10 kbps. More than a little disappointing.
Frankly, I think it's worth $60/year to use the convenient update features. Also it's a great product, I don't mind paying. In fact, I bought the $96 subscription even though I've only one system to maintain.
Good for you. I am at the other end of the scale. My current upload is 25kB/s but the download is below 1kB. At current rate I will be finished around the time the RH-9 hits the mirrors. IE One week.
Help fight continental drift.
I've put BitTorrent as well as the redhat9.torrent file onto the Gnutella2 network via Shareaza.
R EXAKVK.QA52MAAYOCT5CVSQFCUD24AVT3Y7EBF2VPIBYRA&dn= redhat9.torrent
5 WJ6LZM.6LYARQMT3E6TDRYPZUUU4FQZJTYK7H7E5AFSUWY&dn= bittorrent-3.2.1.exe
As soon as I finish downloading the isos (In ~8 hours according to the BT client) I'll put them up too.
Here's the URIs if anyone's interested:
magnet:?xt=urn:bitprint:KPKJPITE2FDTIJ776V3542BRE
magnet:?xt=urn:bitprint:WWPHGP7VAWBZMXAY5FDEVSWER
Let me know if those links are good, this is my first time posting this type of link anywhere. If they're bad I'll correct them if I can figure out how.
Information doesn't want to be anthropomorphized anymore.
yeah, now we can slashdot each other ;-)
I've experiments to run, there is research to be done on the people who are still alive.
I encourage people to put the redhat .isos onto other p2p networks (gnutella, etc.) as well as BT. Sure, BT's nifty, but it's good to get the data out as widely as possible. Not everyone can run BT.
After I've finished my download, I'll put it up on gnutella. My copy shouldn't be the only one.
Forward, retransmit, or republish anything I say here. Just don't misquote me.
I couldn't start up a DL until I got home from work (damned fascist firewalls at work) and when I did, I was getting results like this: Download rate: 1kB/sec Upload rate: 14kB/sec Not sure how people were grabbing 14k off me since I didn't have squat on my box yet, but given 3000 people doing P2P for this, I would expect to at least receive as much as I give...
Let it run for a while, they said....forward ports 6881-6889, they said...Your download speed will jump to 100-200k. Bullshit!
After two hours my stats are d/l 3k/s (7.08 Mb) and u/l 11k/s (17.75 Mb)
I'd be better off waiting a week and getting it from a mirror. This program needs to be seriously re-thought out. I hope you got a nice kick-back Jamie. Even my 768/128 cable connection should do better than this!
I guess enough bitching, but this was praised as the new Napster, its not.
Mod me down, I don't care, but its still the truth!
Vertical
72 CD D7 52 D0 7E D8 47 44 91 D5 84 D1 59 F1 A9-This is my 128bit integer. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
hey.
i was thinking about getting a subscription to their service, but i'm not really interested in up2date. i setup my own apt repository and i'm happily using apt4rpm. my question is do you have rsync access to redhat's servers to their eratta? if not do you know if they offer this in a different service?
-- john
Mirrors:
i sc 1.iso3 86-disc 2.iso3 86-disc 3.iso
i sc 1.iso3 86-disc 2.iso3 86-disc 3.iso
http://www.crapromedia.com/redhat/shrike-i386-d
http://www.crapromedia.com/redhat/shrike-i
http://www.crapromedia.com/redhat/shrike-i
http://www.betagraphix.com/shrike/shrike-i386-d
http://www.betagraphix.com/shrike/shrike-i
http://www.betagraphix.com/shrike/shrike-i
Gotta say, BitTorrent came right through and I got the download in about 4 hours and change.
HOWEVER... Did a fresh install on an older HP Kayak. Didn't see anything for installed hardware. Didn't see or even try to find the lan eth0 - Intel 10/100 Pro. This machine comes with a ISA sound card, and sndconfig doesn't even install. Yes, I probably should install these items seperatly, and I'm sure the RPMs are not too hard to come by, but with a brand new install and older hardware, I'd like to think that I wouldn't need to. Isn't RH trying to be the easy install king?
OTOH - Mandrake 9.1 comes right up, sees the network card, sndconfig kinda pukes on the ISA sound card (old Aztec that worked find in win98SE) - I haven't take a lot of time to play with the settings or look at the card to see if it's got jumpers... but it's much easier.
OTOHOH - Mandrake 9.1 will NOT install at all on my old Gateway laptop. Freezes on the main install screen. Where as RH breezes through, but won't even try to find the PCMCIA Network card (Cisco 350 Airnet). Ended up putting WinXP on it, less install time, no headaches - found and installed everything just fine once I put the cisco drivers on it.
So which is better? I hate to say it, but my experiences are leaning towards RH 7.3 and Windoze series stuff. Look like both have some more work to do - IMNVHO.
Good judgment comes from experience, and a lot of that comes from bad judgment.
Bittorrent kicks ass. I started downloading a couple of hours ago and was getting less than 10KB/s. Now that I punched open the incoming port, my full download bandwidth is saturated, and it appears that my upload rate is decent too. Not only does this protocol disperse the slashdot effect, it optimizes the file transfers. Maybe if popular web pages could be served by "trackers", they would withstand the slashdot effect a lot better without needing gargantuate bandwidth or several load-balanced servers.
And Brer RedHat said, "Please, please Brer BitTorrent, don't take the load off of my central servers so that my paying customers can get at a cerfified, supported version of the operating system. I would cry and cry -- oh how it would hurt! -- if all the free-loading college kids with big bandwidth and no money downloaded my product off of other people's dime and became great hackers that on graduating might form companies that need guaranteed support. In the mean time, oh how I would miss the Slashdot effect on my own servers! How lonely my customers will be without the seething hordes of ./ to share their pipe!" ../RedHat9.iso
And Brer BitTorrent laughed and threw the ISO into its briar patch.
Brer RedHat landed on his feet, laughed and ran off to gambol with his customers.
-- AdAstra
time left: 13 hour 13 min 33 sec
download to:
download rate: 36 kB/s
upload rate: 39 kB/s
So can anyone post the MD5 checksums for the RH9 ISO's, crypto-signed by Red Hat? Otherwise there's no way to verify that the bits from bittorrent are right, unless we assume that the source bits are right and bittorrent's checksumming is correct.
This is how eMule's credit system works: as you upload chunks to thousands of people swarming off you, you earn "IOU" credit that gets you bumped of their upload queue as a reward. The only problem with this is that eMule's ids unique clients based on a spoofable userhash, so all you'd have to do is view your local creditfile and spoof the most generous uploader on the assumption that he uploads just as much to other clients and has more credit due. (should be using GPG here; which can later be extended to webs of trust).
--
Power to the Peaceful
correction: I meant to say that uploading gets you bumped UP other peoples' queue faster; not OFF their queue.
bstark.pp.se is now the property of the United States government. Quite funny.
Is bstark only temporarily gone, or am I missing something?
I written up a close examination of Red Hat Linux 9. The review covers
three main categories:
* Architectural & behavioral changes
* Installer changes
* Changes to included software packages
This is a NOT a fluff ("the fonts are as pretty as Windows") review.
This document is meant for system administrators.
You can find the review at:
http://www.GuruLabs.com/RedHatLinux9-review.html
Comments and feedback welcome.
Dax Kelson
Guru Labs
This is an important request. We need RedHat's MD5 sums to be able to properly verify the isos.
Information doesn't want to be anthropomorphized anymore.
"error connecting to tracker (100061) connection refused". (.torrent file was completed, 1,7gb already allocated, filenames created etc.)
Man, I can't tell you how much I love programs that give fully detailed error messages, so anyone can understand what the heck is going wrong with it and what I have to do to correct the error.
A program, that allocates the entire download beforehand, wasting some 1,7gb for this, and THEN refuses to work is just retarded.
WHY is the connection refused and WHAT can I do to to prevent it?
I fear, it's the IP-forwarding settings in my NAT-box, that don't have the 6889 port set for my machine, but that is just a blind guess thanks to this cute little error message. And with no options in the win-client to change the listen port I'm shit out of luck, since I refuse to open up the router and change the port assignments for all machines in my house.
http://www.crapromedia.com/redhat/shrike-i386-disc 1.iso
http://www.crapromedia.com/redhat/shrike-i386-disc 2.iso
http://www.crapromedia.com/redhat/shrike-i386-disc 3.iso
And you want this redfart 9 garbage because ?
Use the headless or curses versions.
:)
I'm using the curses BT client under screen. Started at around 20-30 kB/sec, now I'm at approx. 270 kB/sec, and uploading 35K/sec even without opening up those listening ports.
(Note: I did use --ip to tell it my real "outside world" IP instead of giving the system my internal one.)
I'll leave it running until I reboot the machine (Sometime this evening.) That'll likely be 5-6 hours of serving up the files after the d/l completes.
BitTorrent rocks!
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
Their site is sparse on images and the BT client is small, plus there is no dynamic content. They seem to be handling the load fine.
And the RedHat download - This is the fastest RedHat download I've EVER done... BT rocks.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
Maybe it did when there were few BT clients running, but at this point, on a Cablevision OptimumOnline cable modem connection:
270KB/sec down, 35 KB/sec up.
Try it. If it goes slow, make sure port 6881 is open, although there are enough clients online now that it doesn't seem to matter. (I have it closed and it's working fine. I'd open it up except my crappy Belkin router's web UI and Lynx don't get along.)
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
IIRC, that Sony drive is 4x capable.
:)
:)
Go to www.rima.com and buy some 4x discs. $2 each for Ritek G04s in a 25-pack, $1.80 each in a 100-pack.
Burn in 15 minutes.
(I have a Pioneer DVR-105... These RH9 CDs are going on a DVD!
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
BitTorrent is cool, but what is this "Cash" you speak of?
A programmer is a machine for converting coffee into code.
I don't know whether that's an April Fool's joke or not :|.
I got over 622kb/s download at peak, but all I ended up with was 3 iso's that burned frisbees. Don't waste blanks without checking the iso.
The first iso is functional, though... Could it be that you posted the mirror before your download was complete?
Yes. We are listening. We sit in dark rooms barely lit only by computer screens and are listening to your heart-beat, the sounds of your digestion and to the staccato of your keystrokes as you type subversive messages to the internet. Did I mention that we are also reading? Soon we will come for you and then we will read you your emails, your text files, your irc logs and then you will talk and we will listen.
Yes, I do pay $60 to RedHat network.
I set up the download of the first iso disc last night. With a DSL connection in the US, the file just finished about 22 hours later. Wow.
So I downloaded bit torrent to see if the download would be faster. So far, its not really. The download rate is from 4k to 7k.
Sigh.
open mind: teaching computers the stuff
http://lartc.org/wondershaper/
killall -9 mozilla-bin
The following quote is from page 4-27 of the MSCP Basic Disk Functions
.
Manual which is part of the UDA50 Programmers Doc Kit manuals:
As stated above, the host area of a disk is structured as a vector of
logical blocks. From a performance viewpoint, however, it is more
appropriate to view the host area as a four dimensional hyper-cube, the
four dimensions being cylinder, group, track, and sector.
. .
Referring to our hyper-cube analogy, the set of potentially accessible
blocks form a line parallel to the track axis. This line moves
parallel to the sector axis, wrapping around when it reaches the edge
of the hyper-cube.
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