[tex-live] TeX Live on usb drive

Robin Fairbairns Robin.Fairbairns at cl.cam.ac.uk
Mon Mar 23 12:25:53 CET 2009


Philip & Le Khanh <Philip-and-LeKhanh at Royal-Tunbridge-Wells.Org> wrote:

> Piete Brooks wrote:
> > As an outsider, my view is ...
> >
> >> A suggestion was made that he might like to use the dynamic ZIP capability
> >> of some of the CTAN nodes
> >
> > I believe we were the only one still to retain that facility, until
> > a few days ago when some suggested using it to download whole trees
> > to keep "up to date", rather than to just fetch files which have
> > changed.
> 
> I missed that suggestion, Piete : can you copy the
> original message back to this CC list, as it is
> clearly not what we were discussing in this
> thread and may well explain Robin's unexpected
> reaction ?
> 
> > If he's fetching it for the first time, it's not a problem, but as I
> > remember, others are advocating routinely fetching ZIPed copies
> > rather then just fetching changed files.
> 
> Again, I have seen no suggestion of the latter in this thread.
> 
> >> (it transpired that the file would also be slightly smaller, but that was
> >> an unexpected bonus).
> > (and not all that significant?)
> 
> Well, if bytes cost money, fewer bytes cost less.
> "A penny saved is a penny earned" <cite>everyone's
> grandmother</>
> 
> >> The discussion then moved on to consider whether daily static ZIPping of
> >> TLnet/2008 might be a possibility,
> >
> > As I see it, that might encourage lazy fetching at the cost of more traffic.
> 
> Yes, I can appreciate that risk.

i suspect it's not a risk, but an established fact.  to be entirely sure
of the "established fact" part of it, i need to watch my miktex traffic
for the near future

> >> It was at that point that I sent my question to the CTAN administrators.
> >> I still think that dynamic ZIPping might be the better option,
> >
> > I thought the other nodes disable this some time ago ...
> 
> Perhaps they did (I do not know) but that doesn't
> make the suggestion pointless : rather, if there
> is agreement that the suggestion is sound, then
> it might be worth raising the issue with the
> other CTAN administrators.

wu-ftpd is, i believe. the only ftp daemon in current use, that offers
dynamic archive creation.  cam.ctan.org is the only ctan site that uses
wu-ftpd (though no doubt there are mirrors that do); and cam.ctan.org is
about to be re-grooved to use a different daemon that doesn't offer the
facility.

there's no chance that the other sites will revert to wu-ftpd (it's
buggy), and the decision to move away from it, here, is irrevocable.

robin


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