From owner-freebsd-stable Thu Feb 18 0:24: 1 1999 Delivered-To: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org Received: from zippy.cdrom.com (zippy.cdrom.com [204.216.27.228]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id B163B111AF for ; Thu, 18 Feb 1999 00:23:52 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from jkh@zippy.cdrom.com) Received: from zippy.cdrom.com (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by zippy.cdrom.com (8.9.3/8.9.2) with ESMTP id AAA97628; Thu, 18 Feb 1999 00:23:45 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from jkh@zippy.cdrom.com) To: Tommy Hallgren Cc: Randall Hopper , freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: 3.1R ISO CD Image ?? In-reply-to: Your message of "Wed, 17 Feb 1999 23:25:57 PST." <19990218072557.4066.rocketmail@send103.yahoomail.com> Date: Thu, 18 Feb 1999 00:23:45 -0800 Message-ID: <97624.919326225@zippy.cdrom.com> From: "Jordan K. Hubbard" Sender: owner-freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG I'm not making ISO images available anymore due to several factors: 1. Transferring 650MB images from ftp.cdrom.com uses up an "ftp slot" (out of the 3600 available) for quite awhile in comparison to the folks who just want to grab a 50K zip file and be gone again. In the middle of the day, with up to 300 people grabbing ISOs at a time, it's just not fair to the other users of the site and dg-ftpd doesn't have any facilities (that I know of) for making certain files available only during certain times, nor do I expect that DG would much care to add such a feature. Even if there were provisions for such a thing, it would be confusing to say the least and people would generate tech support email over it during the times it was not up for download. It's just not worth the trouble or the bandwidth! 2. I personally feel that it hurts sales to put the full product CD up for FTP. Some people agree with this, some don't, but I still feel uncomfortable about it and a lot more people's jobs than just my own are at risk if I make the wrong call on whether it's a good thing (for promotion) or a bad thing (for CD sales) to put the ISO images up for FTP. Probably best to just err on the side of caution with this one, I think. CD sales directly fund projects like the new package system and installer, for example, and if we want the product as a whole to increase in attractiveness then we've got to have *some* way of raising the tens of thousands of dollars it takes to pay consultants who are capable of doing that kind of work. No two ways about it. :( 3. It's not something I should even particularly need to do given that anyone else could do it just as easily and absolve me of even having to ponder the cruel trade-offs of point #2. You take one FreeBSD distribution directory, one XFree86 directory, one pruned (to fit one what's left of one 650MB CD image) packages directory, blop it all into a single directory and run mkisofs over the whole mess (scripts for doing which have always been in /usr/share/examples/worm) and bingo, you've got an installation ISO image. If you've done a local make release, even better - you have ${CHROOTDIR}/R/cdrom as your starting point for both CDs #1 and #2 (the live filesystem) if you want to go all-out and try and replicate the 2 CD snapshot distribution CDs we do. How do you guys think I do it? Same way. :) CDs 3 and 4 are just extra packages and ports distfiles that didn't fit on CDs 1 and 2 if you're _really_ keen to reproduce the commercially available product; there's definitely no rocket science here. You could then be a good samaritan and put these images up on your OWN ftp site, as is your just and due right under FreeBSD's free software licensing terms, and everybody's happy. The users are happy because they have their ISO images available for download again, produced "clean room" from WC's own product even, and I'm happy since I don't have to deal with people tugging on my sleeve and whining for ISO images like they were alms for the poor! :-) - Jordan To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-stable" in the body of the message