ISO names (Was: 4.9-RC2 is on ftp-master..)

[João Carlos Mendes Luís]

Murray Stokely wrote:
> On Wed, Oct 08, 2003 at 02:22:44PM -0300, Daniel C. Sobral wrote:
> 
>>>I think it is redundant since the files are living in /pub/FreeBSD.
>>>If you move them someplace where FreeBSD it no longer part of the
>>>namespace, then sure, it probably makes sense for you to add FreeBSD
>>>back into the name.
>>
>>Well, you are thinking of FTP. Jo?o is referring to P2P applications, 
> 
> No I'm not, I specifically told the poster that he should rename them
> if he takes them out of the FTP namespace.  I was thinking exactly of
> P2P applications.

     This means that anyone who wants to share the same file in two 
networks would need to have two copies of the same file?

     Also, having FreeBSD in the file name helps to distribute ISOs in 
p2p networks even by users who don't know that they would need to change 
the name.  This gives us more uploaders.

>>some of which are particularly well suited to the fast distribution on 
>>very large files, and in those the concept of the "directory" the files 
>>are in may be non-existent.
> 
> Yep, that's why I told him to add 'FreeBSD' to the namespace of his
> app if he takes it out of FTP.
> 
> The directory hierarchy is far long enough, and the filenames are also
> quite long.  If anything I think we should be optimizing the other
> way, to make them less redundant and easier for FTP browsers to find.

     The ftp hierachy could probably be optimized, but not much.  Users 
tend to download everything in a single directory.

> Any kind of FTP<->P2P gateway needs to translate names appropriately.

     The "translation" is just to add the ISO dirs to the pool of p2p 
applications.  With the adding benefit of using bandwidth from users who 
have already downloaded ISOs.

> It would be trivial for a script to take some of the information from

     Scripts are ok for technocrats (and beeing one, I love scripts), 
but what I meant is to easy things for non-technocrats.  What's the 
benefit in changing the ISO name in p2p appplication if users simply do 
not know which name will be there?

> the FTP directory and use it in the P2P namespace.  Every peice of
> information does not need to be duplicated in both the path and the
> filename in order to save 5 minutes of time for the handful of people
> setting up such systems.

     It will not save 5 minutes.  It will, I hope, save terabytes of 
bandwidth from servers.

     Make a try: select your preferred p2p and search for the most 
obvious: "FreeBSD".  You will find almost nothing.  On the other hand, 
try searching for Linux, and you'll see lots of ISOs.

<PEDANTIC>
     If we follow your reasoning, the -i386- part in iso name should 
also be removed, since it is "redundant".  By the way, why not remove 
the version name also?  Let's have ISOs named by FTP namespace:

ftp://ftp.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/releases/i386/ISO-IMAGES/4.8/disc1.iso
</PEDANTIC>

<ABSOLUTELLY PEDANTIC>
     Now, we could also have:

ftp://ftp.freebsd.org/pub/releases/i386/ISO-IMAGES/4.8/disc1.iso

     since FreeBSD is already at the host name, right?
</ABSOLUTELLY PEDANTIC>

     Back to normal speach: I just wanted to prove that having "FreeBSD" 
in ISOs name is important, even if redundant on ftp/http namespace.

     My 2 cents,

                                         Jonny

PS: Having said that, what about putting ed2k: URIs at the FreeBSD 
release page?  It's almost the same as putting MD5SUMS, with the added 
benefit of instructing how to download.

-- 
João Carlos Mendes Luís - Networking Engineer - jonny at jonny.eng.br