This software is for individual Fedora users and sys-admins who need to update one or more Fedora systems that are connected to the internet with low to medium bandwidth link (eg dialup, ISDN, satellite).
The problem:
Not long after a new Fedora Core release, the bandwidth required to update a fresh installation can become burdensome for low/medium bandwidth internet connections. Some update RPMs can be over 80 MBytes in size, yet the update may be almost identical to the original RPM on the distribution disk.
This software presents two solutions to administrators of Fedora systems:
1. A HTTP service which acts as a virtual update RPM repository. It dynamically re-creates update RPMs by downloading a small 'patch' or 'delta' file and applying it to locally stored RPMs from the original distribution.
2. A command line tool which can regenerate an update RPM repository from a delta repository + RPMs from the original distribution.
In addition to the virtual update repository, this software distribution also contains the tools needed to create and maintain a delta repository. I have also made an experimental delta repository which is open to testers (subject to sufficient bandwidth).
Requirements and limitations: * This system uses Michael Schroeder's deltarpm system and must be installed (documented in the installation instructions) * Java (tested with the Fedora free stack and Sun Java) * For the HTTP service you need tomcat5 (the version in the Fedora distribution will work) * For delta repository generation you need lots of RAM to process some of the larger RPMs (eg OpenOffice core). 512MB just about works with some page faulting, 1024MB+ recommended.
Software version: 0.2.0 (28 Feb 2006)
Binary download: http://www.wombat.ie/software/rpmdc/downloads/RPMDC-0.2.0-bin.tar.gz
Source download: http://www.wombat.ie/software/rpmdc/downloads/RPMDC-0.2.0-src.tar.gz
Manual: http://www.wombat.ie/software/rpmdc/manual.html
Release notes: http://www.wombat.ie/software/rpmdc/releasenotes-0.2.0.html
On Tue, 28 Feb 2006 18:18:36 +0000, Joe Desbonnet wrote:
This software is for individual Fedora users and sys-admins who need to update one or more Fedora systems that are connected to the internet with low to medium bandwidth link (eg dialup, ISDN, satellite).
I couldn't get tomcat going on FC4 easily (first time messing with it). So I set up tomcat on a rawhide box and pointed it to your test repo of deltas and a local copy of FC4 base RPMS. Then I was able to update an FC4 box by changing only the /etc/yum.repos.d/fedora-updates.repo to use that rawhide box as a yum virtual repo. It worked great.
A few notes:
A typo in the manual (http://www.wombat.ie/software/rpmdc/manual.html):
In the 'updates-released' section of the file change the baseurl to
baseurl=http://localhost:8080/RPMDC/repo/pub/fedora/linux/core/$releasever/$basearch...
Should be: .../core/updates/$releasever/$basearch/
IMO it would also be handy to have a link to the RPMDC download in the installation section of the RPMDC manual.
Rpm-devel is required to compile deltarpm (this will be obvious to some from the compiler errors about missing includes).
RPMDC wouldn't compile on the rawhide box [(GCC) 4.1.0 20060219 (Red Hat 4.1.0-0.29)] like it would on FC4, but the .war provided in the binary tarball ran just fine.
Tomcat needed the xml-commons-apis package to keep it from complaining at startup.
Neat project!
--Jack Spaar
Jack, Thanks for the feedback. Typos noted. I've just setup FC5test3 on a VMWare virtual machine and looking into those issues now. Regards, Joe.
On 3/2/06, Jack Spaar jspaar@users.sourceforge.net wrote:
On Tue, 28 Feb 2006 18:18:36 +0000, Joe Desbonnet wrote:
This software is for individual Fedora users and sys-admins who need to update one or more Fedora systems that are connected to the internet with low to medium bandwidth link (eg dialup, ISDN, satellite).
I couldn't get tomcat going on FC4 easily (first time messing with it). So I set up tomcat on a rawhide box and pointed it to your test repo of deltas and a local copy of FC4 base RPMS. Then I was able to update an FC4 box by changing only the /etc/yum.repos.d/fedora-updates.repo to use that rawhide box as a yum virtual repo. It worked great.
A few notes:
A typo in the manual (http://www.wombat.ie/software/rpmdc/manual.html):
In the 'updates-released' section of the file change the baseurl to
baseurl=http://localhost:8080/RPMDC/repo/pub/fedora/linux/core/$releasever/$basearch...
Should be: .../core/updates/$releasever/$basearch/
IMO it would also be handy to have a link to the RPMDC download in the installation section of the RPMDC manual.
Rpm-devel is required to compile deltarpm (this will be obvious to some from the compiler errors about missing includes).
RPMDC wouldn't compile on the rawhide box [(GCC) 4.1.0 20060219 (Red Hat 4.1.0-0.29)] like it would on FC4, but the .war provided in the binary tarball ran just fine.
Tomcat needed the xml-commons-apis package to keep it from complaining at startup.
Neat project!
--Jack Spaar
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Joe Desbonnet