Bouncer

[Anthony Bryan]

there's discussion on an OOo mailing list where they're having issues
I think we can help w/.

Bram already patched Bouncer long ago, but nothing ever came of it.
maybe if OOo people are clamoring for it, they'll add it now?

it'd be cool if
http://openoffice.bouncer.osuosl.org/?product=OpenOffice.org&os=linuxintelwjre&lang=en-US&version=2.3.1&metalink=true
returned a metalink!

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Anthony Bryan <anthon...@gmail.com>
Date: Jan 23, 2008 6:21 PM
Subject: Re: [website-dev] Download page - less-click proposal
To: d...@website.openoffice.org

> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: "Christian Lohmaier" <cl...@openoffice.org>
>
> Well, I for myself are in favor of adding alternative ways of
> distribution like using BitTorrent. And don't forget CD Compilations
> and the like.
>
> The current mirror system lacks severe issues. Every release, old
> versions get kicked, often enough versions for which there is no QA'd
> replacement yet and similar issues.
> Bouncer solves part of the problems, but unfortunately when using
> bouncer, there is a single point of failure, and bouncer did
> unfortunately fail quite often. On top of that, bouncer doesn't
> support ftp, which makes using resume or using download mangers in
> general harder (since http probably defaults to using the browser's
> download manager, and that often enough sucks, doesn't support
> resuming a download). As OOo is quite large to download, this aspect
> should not be forgotten.

Hi Christian,

I'd like to see the patch [1] for Bouncer that creates metalinks
accepted upstream.

I think with testing & feedback, metalinks could be very useful to
people downloading OOo. OOo already uses metalinks, but they rely on
an outside party & they are not always updated. metalinks are
frequently used for ISO downloads which are larger & suffer from the
same problems.

metalinks (XML) list all the mirrors for a file, along with checksums
& other info, so downloads are more reliable & can be automatically
verified & repaired if needed.
about 30 apps support metalink, mostly download managers, FTP & P2P
clients, & web browsers. they all support resume, and since the
metalinks contain multiple URLs (with priority & geographical location
listed), if one fails then the next one can be tried without prompting
from the user.

you can open a common metalink in a text editor if you're curious:
http://download.packages.ro/metalink/openoffice/OOo_2_3_0_LinuxIntel_install_wJRE_en-US_tar_gz.metalink

here's a screenshot of a Ubuntu ISO metalink about to be downloaded
with DownThemAll, a Firefox extension:
http://www.metalinker.org/images/dta_ubuntu.png
(as you can see, there's room for descriptions, graphics, OS,
language, adding multiple files to a download queue, & other fun
stuff).

--
(( Anthony Bryan ... Metalink [ http://www.metalinker.org ]
)) Easier, More Reliable, Self Healing Downloads

[1] http://metamirrors.nl/node/116

[Bram Neijt]

Great, make sure they know they can mail me when they need information
on the Bouncer patch or would like to discuss other mirroring systems.

Bram

[Anthony Bryan]

a chance to get metalink support into Bouncer finally?

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Florian Effenberger
To: d...@distribution.openoffice.org, mir...@distribution.openoffice.org
Date: Mon, 07 Jul 2008 20:21:55 +0200
Subject: development of the Bouncer
Hello everyone,

the Bouncer is a vital part of the distribution of OpenOffice.org, but
unfortunately, it has its bottlenecks. In order to prepare a fabolous
launch of 3.0, we currently plan on working on the Bouncer ourselves
in order to fix some of the most outstanding issues.

Frank Mau compiled a list at http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/Bouncer

The most important ones (in order of preference) are: support for
extended/archive data set, and GeoIP support. The idea is to find
community developers to enhance the current version (2.x) which, from
what I know, is written in Python. Some features might be ported from
the 1.x branch.

Do we have any developers willing to help us on this task? It would be
great if we could achieve something together as a community!

Florian

[Sebastien WILLEMIJNS]

On Mon, 7 Jul 2008 14:45:37 -0400, "Anthony Bryan"
<anthon...@gmail.com> said:
>
> a chance to get metalink support into Bouncer finally?

no "metalink" word on the wiki :-X