Bug#1011343: WISHLIST: Offical ALL-IN-ONE images?

On 2022/5/21 22:54, Linux-Fan wrote:

>> I admit a local mirror is more suitable for large set of computers. 
>> But for a small set of computers, for example, 1-5 computers, setting 
>> up a local mirror might be too heavy.
> 
> Actually I think this may be a misconception. Setting up a mirror for 
> internal use is (from my experience with the `ftpsync` script, cf.
> https://www.debian.org/mirror/ftpmirror) pretty straight-forward. AFAIK 
> the minimal steps are as follows:
> 
> - Download and extract ftpsync to a location
> - Configure distrib/etc/ftpsync.conf
> - Setup a webserver to serve the mirror directory
> - Invoke mirror script
> - Then point clients to the webserver location
> 

Thanks for this information. I think I overestimated the difficulty of 
creating a mirror.

> The advantages of using a mirror over iso images are probably worth 
> noting, too:
> 
> - No need to understand the working of jigdo

As a user, jigdo is easy :-) Feed 'jigdo-lite' with 'xxx.iso.jigdo' and 
then go to sleep. When you wake up, the 'xxx.iso' file is ready.

> - Works well with all kinds of machines
>    (physical, virtual, remote etc.)
> - Can span multiple architectures:
>    It should come as a huge advantage in storage requirements
>    if you ever need more than one architecture because unlike the
>    .iso-based approach only the architectures of interest will be
>    contained in the mirror and packages common for all architectures
>    will only be stored once.
> - Can take advantage of better file system performance, load balanching
>    and caching. This would probably only affect large installations,
>    though. > - In case networking is really not wanted on client machines, a mirror
>    can also be rsync'ed to target storage media and then referenced by
>    `file://` entries in the client's `/etc/apt/sources.list`.
> 

Indeed, a local mirror is more suitable in most cases. I only come up 
with a few cases that ISOs are more useful:

1) When installing packages using a mirror, the mirror machine must be 
powered on. There is no need for a dedicated mirror machine if using 
ISO. (This doesn't affect offline storage medias, though)

2) ISOs are faster to copy than a lot of small packages. (Rsync will be 
easier to update, though)

3) ISOs are easy to verify integrity. Run 'sha512sum -c SHA256SUMS' then 
you are confident there is no problem in its contents.

4) ISOs are easy to archive or create parity archives like PAR2 
archives. It's more robust than having lots of small files. (Creating 
tarballs may provide same advantages, though)

After all, I admit the advantages of ISOs are minor. But I think it's 
good to have an alternative :-)


> HTH and YMMV
> Linux-Fan
> 
> öö


Best Regards,
Zhang Boyang