On Thu, 20 Nov 2003, Gavan Fantom wrote:

> 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.

	I don't think most of them do provide SHA1 checksums of their
	content, though it could be very worthwhile running a cheap
	size check frequently and a less frequent download everything
	check...

-- 
		David/absolute          -- www.netbsd.org: No hype required --