On 04/13/2013 03:54 AM, Akemi Yagi wrote: > 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. Yeah - CentOS creates deltas for the last 7 versions of packages. I'd usually say 3 is good, 5 is great (however not required). It really makes sense to only enable deltas for sl6x-security, sl6x-fastbugs. I guess you COULD also do it on the main sl6x repo to greatly reduce the bandwidth required to update between major point releases... Just as a quick example... Upgrading bind from the base to the latest in updates is: bind-9.8.2-0.17.rc1.el6_4.4.x86_64.rpm - 4Mb Using the delta, this reduces to about 450Kb. I recently installed Fedora 18 on a netbook - the initial update from the install DVD to be in sync with all the updates was reduced by over 60% by using deltas. The lower bandwidth required to transfer this is significant. I don't see it being a resource hog - as just like creating the packages in the first place, you do it once, and its done. It is also managed automatically by createrepo. > 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. I agree, universities probably get the better end of the stick in the US. Don't confuse this with the rest of the world though :) There are quite a few universities around the globe that charge their students for internet access - and lots of people around the globe that *still* cannot get more than dialup internet access. I agree that in the past, universities were probably the biggest user of SL - these days I would say that casual users would greatly outnumber university users. Recently on the #slforum channel on freenode I have been talking to an SL user that is stuck on SL5.5 - as to download the 6.4 ISO would take almost a week. This obviously started the chain of thought regarding deltas... -- Steven Haigh Email: [log in to unmask] Web: https://www.crc.id.au Phone: (03) 9001 6090 - 0412 935 897 Fax: (03) 8338 0299