Anaconda: good work!

[Jon Burgess]

Bill Nottingham wrote:
> Jon Burgess (jburgess at uklinux.net) said: 
>> Chris Lumens wrote:
>>> We can't really do this easily.  Making a new anaconda means making new
>>> first and second stage images, which means making new CD and DVD images,
>>> which means a huge headache for mirrors and for keeping track of all
>>> these versions of images floating around.
>> Using Jigdo http://atterer.net/jigdo/ could help reduce the amount of 
>> data needed to be stored by the mirrors for a re-spun CD/DVD ISOs. It 
>> reduces the amount of data to be downloaded if the user already has the 
>> original ISOs.
>>
>> It also allows enables other things like making a set of CD ISOs from 
>> the RPMS on a DVD ISO (or the reverse).
>>
>> I see it has just been added to extras-devel if anyone wants to try it out.
> 
> If someone wants to post example jigdo stuff we could put on the
> mirror master, that would be great. Not sure it's practical for rawhide,
> though, as we really don't even want to go to the effort of spinning
> isos for that.
> 
> Bill
> 

I've just created jigdo and template files for the FC5 i386 and x86-64 
CD and DVD ISOs. See http://www.jburgess.uklinux.net/jigdo/

To install Jigdo on FC5:

# yum --enablerepo=extras-development install jigdo

To get it to build the i386 disc1 ISO:

# jigdo-lite http://www.jburgess.uklinux.net/jigdo/FC-5-i386-disc1.jigdo

Jigdo has already come in useful for me. I've been able to convert the 
DVD ISOs which I downloaded via Bittorrent into the CD ISOs and rescue 
CD without having to download any extra fies.

The jigdo and template files are tiny. Less than 2MB per architecture. I 
think that they would make a useful addition to a future Fedora release.

The Debian ISO process appears to use a patched mkisofs which generates 
the jigdo meta files at the same time that the ISOs are created. See 
http://www.einval.com/~steve/software/JTE/

I'm sure the download options could do with a little work. The jigdo 
file currently specifies http://download.fedoraproject.org as the 
download location so it gets redirected off to a new mirror for every 
file that it tries to download. It looks like Jigdo has some hard coded 
behaviour for selecting Debian mirrors, I guess we could do something 
similar for Fedora and perhaps utilise the yum mirrorlist file.

	Jon