Ben Reser wrote: > On Sat, Aug 02, 2003 at 08:21:17PM -0400, David Walser wrote: >> If you're using straight rsync, or even worse, an FTP mirroring >> program, you should be using rpmsync, which is now packaged and in >> contrib. It'll save you, and the server you're mirroring from, lots >> of bandwidth. > > Not really accurate.
Yes it is. > Since the rpm archive is compressed with gzip and > to my knowledge we do not have the rysncable patch in our gzip (nor does > rpm use it) the only data which can be saved from being downloaded is > the headers which are not compressed and do not always change much > between versions. However the headers by far are the smaller part of > the package. > > This document by the rsync author (which happens to talk about Debian > but the same issues apply to rpms and Mandrake) covers the issues > nicely: > http://samba.anu.edu.au/rsync/rsync-and-debian/rsync-and-debian.html > > In short the solution to this problem goes far beyond having a system to > rename the files so rsync will resume the transfer... It's true that things could better. But some packages are more the same than just the header. I've seen large parts of packages saved from being downloaded. Believe me, though it's not ideal for rsync, rpmsync still saves a significant amount of bandwidth over straight rsync.
