On Thu, Apr 11, 2013 at 10:57 AM, Steven Haigh <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> I'm wondering why we don't take advantage of deltarpms for updates on SL6
> (and maybe SL5).
>
> There are a few people I know that bandwidth is an issue - and something
> like this would solve that problem.
>
> I do know its a bit more work, but it is something that can easily be
> automated...

I think that maintaining deltarpms involves more than 'a bit more
work'.  Take a look, for example, at CentOS's drpms directory:

http://mirror.centos.org/centos/6/updates/x86_64/drpms/

The total size of this directory as of this writing is 7.6 GB. For
comparison, the corresponding Packages/ directory is 0.49 GB. This
means two things. One is that not just the SL sites but all mirror
sites would see the increase in the volume. The other is that building
the drpm packages will take a significant amount of time. And this
must be done for *each* package update. This is potentially a resource
hog.

So, the question will be whether or not the requirement for more
resources can be justified by the demand for drpms. At least in the
past, most SL users were associated with universities or research
institute where the bandwidth was not a primary issue. Besides, many
of those sites probably maintain their local mirror.

Akemi