ISO downloads with multiple mirrors for higher reliabilty, automatic checksum verification

[Anthony L. Bryan]

Hi,

I've made Metalinks for a few FreeBSD ISOs:

http://www.metalinker.org/samples/FreeBSD_6_2-BETA3-amd64-bootonly_iso.metal
ink
http://www.metalinker.org/samples/FreeBSD_6_2-BETA3-amd64-disc1_iso.metalink
http://www.metalinker.org/samples/FreeBSD_6_2-BETA3-amd64-disc2_iso.metalink
http://www.metalinker.org/samples/FreeBSD_6_2-BETA3-i386-bootonly_iso.metali
nk
http://www.metalinker.org/samples/FreeBSD_6_2-BETA3-i386-disc1_iso.metalink
http://www.metalinker.org/samples/FreeBSD_6_2-BETA3-i386-disc2_iso.metalink

There's mention of Metalink on your wiki:
http://wikitest.freebsd.org/Metalink

These contain the mirrors and checksums for automatic verification like so
(priority/location of mirrors can be listed too):

		<verification>
			<hash
type="md5">b8f2b073baf7ecc732bdc5b646f35cff</hash>
		</verification>
		<resources>
			<url preference="100" location="ar"
type="ftp">ftp://ftp.ar.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/releases/i386/ISO-IMAGES/6.2
/6.2-BETA3-i386-disc1.iso</url>
			<url preference="100" location="au"
type="ftp">ftp://ftp.au.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/releases/i386/ISO-IMAGES/6.2
/6.2-BETA3-i386-disc1.iso</url>
			<url preference="100" location="bg"
type="ftp">ftp://ftp.bg.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/releases/i386/ISO-IMAGES/6.2
/6.2-BETA3-i386-disc1.iso</url>
			<url preference="100" location="br"
type="ftp">ftp://ftp.br.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/releases/i386/ISO-IMAGES/6.2
/6.2-BETA3-i386-disc1.iso</url>

(Metalinks can list multiple files, language, and OS/arch, so you could have
one metalink listing with both archs, then filter by command line options to
get the arch you want).

Here's another description:
'Metalink makes complex download pages obsolete by replacing long lists of
download mirrors and BitTorrent trackers with a single .metalink file. As
you might have already guessed, a .metalink file is a file that tells a
download manager all the different ways it can download a file. The file
itself takes the form of an open XML standard that can list an unlimited
number of HTTP and FTP sources as well as BitTorrent trackers and ed2k and
magnet links.'
(http://www.downloadsquad.com/2006/08/28/metalinks-integrated-bittorrent-htt
p-and-ftp-downloads/)

Right now, Metalinks are used by OpenOffice.org, and Linux/BSD
distributions. Metalinks are supported by a number of download managers on
Unix, Mac, and Win. aria2 (http://aria2.sourceforge.net/) is a command line
download utility that works well. Metalink command line tools
(http://prog.infosnel.nl/metalinks/) can be used to generate metalinks.
There are other tools for automatically making Metalinks when files are
synced to a mirror.

thanks,

(( Anthony Bryan
 )) Metalink [ http://www.metalinker.org ]