[WBEL-users] bittorrent for WBEL 4.0 updates perhaps?

[Greg Knaddison]

On 5/18/05, Mark Reynolds <mark at reynolds.net.au> wrote:
> 
> Having only recently discovered the wonders
> of bittorrent, I started thinking about how
> it could be used for updates.
> 
> Has anyone given this any thought?
> Has anyone seen this done anywhere else?
> Has anyone done this themselves?

Yes, it has been broached on the bittorrent and yum listserves and has
met with limited enthusiasm.

https://lists.dulug.duke.edu/pipermail/yum/2004-October/005496.html
and
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/BitTorrent/messages/6101?viscount=100
and
http://lists.ibiblio.org/pipermail/bittorrent/2004-June/000561.html

One major point is that bittorrent is apparently great for a few big
files (isos, movies), but is not so efficient with lots of smaller
files.  The typical set of update files is a bunch of relatively small
files.

Plus, opening up ports 6881-6999 (or whatever they are) is required by
BT and is not something many people can legitimately do.

Further, the idea of using bittorrent (relatively new, may have
security problems) in a process that can only be run by root (yum) is
scary to most so you get into spawning children owned by a new
user...blech.
<snip> 

> All the usual benefits of bt would apply, but I
> can't wrap my head around how new files being
> inserted in the source repository, would get published.

There are plugins to azureus and other BT clients that handle
updateable torrents in an RSS file or something like that.

> 
> Would such a system require a new .torrent file to be
> published, as new update files were added?

Probably so, but as I said, that problem has been overcome by the
television series crowd.  They subscribe to rss feeds of their
favorite tv shows and then as a new series is released their BT client
grabs it.  I have heard this anyway...personally I don't use BT for
movies/tvshows (seriously) - (no... _seriously_).

<snip> 

> I'm happy to setup a test system here, based on my
> latest WBEL 4.0 server. But I'd like feedback and
> thoughts on a system which would be easy to maintain,
> easy for WBEL newbies to use, be yum based as always,
> and hopefully, and improve the update process.
> 

The problems I presented are certainly not insurmountable and if you
want to help you could contact the folks that followed up on the
messages I linked to that were interested in the idea.  It seemed like
someone on the yahoo BT group was pretty far in the work and may even
have a half working system at this point.  I still think it could work
in spite of the problems listed above.  At least it could work better
than _just_ having http/ftp for the traffic.

In the end, I solved my bandwidth problems by creating local yum
repositories which I rsync'ed in a cron job.

Regards,
Greg