On Thu, 20 Nov 2003, David Brownlee wrote:

> 	Would there be any sense is setting up a machine which would run
> 	though all the DISTFILES, including mirror sites, download them
> 	all and verify they have not changed?

Given that most ftp and http servers provide ways of retrieving metadata
without the entire file, I would imagine that checking the metadata
periodically in these cases would save a tremendous amount of bandwidth,
load and potentially cost, not just for us, but for the providers of the
mirror sites and distfiles, who may be paying for their bandwidth.

Of course, this leaves a few on servers which won't provide metadata. I
guess there's no real way around this.

-- 
Gillette - the best a man can forget