Hi,

Has anyone tried metalinks for Mandriva ISO downloads? They can list multiple mirrors & p2p, along with full file checksums like the .md5 or .sha1 files you already have and chunk checksums which allow downloads to be repaired. they're a simple XML format with automated tools for generating them. there's more info on wikipedia.

aria2 is a good CLI client for downloading, and most other download managers on Windows and Mac support it.

If you'd like to try it out, there are a few .metalinks for Mandriva at http://www.metalinker.org/samples.html

The downloads are usually very fast and if the download client uses the chunk checksums they will be error free, which is especially nice for DVD ISOs.

http://www.metalinker.org/samples.html#mandriva now has .metalinks for the DVD, KDE, and GNOME CD ISOs.

DownThemAll! 1.0 Beta (Cross platform Firefox extension) now supports metalink downloads from mirrors and full file checksum verification.

Thanks for the Windows screenshot, however you'll find we use Linux here

If there is a Linux client for this, please provide it, else you'll find this will fall on dead ears.

It's a firefox extention, thus it's cross platform. Or at least, I know this one is. There's also a tonne of metalink command line clients.

No need to be so cold ianw

Ah OK, I should have read it more clearly

sorry man, I edited my post to make it clear that DTA is a Firefox extension that works on any OS.

however, it's good to have clients on Windows, because you want people on there to be able to get your ISOs as easy as possible to install them, don't you? for that, there are 9 metalink clients.

here are the other Linux clients: aria2, KGet (KDE4 version), Phex, wxDownload Fast.

aria2 is an exhellent+idiot proof CLI downloader.
Phex is basically a P2P (*tella) application written in Java, with elementary support for other networks, while wxDownload is a strong candidate for the title of the most frequent segfaulter between all Linux appplications.

HAH! wxDF isn't the most stable app, you're right.

I really like aria2 myself.

I may have to go and get this. Here at work when I try to get the dvd iso it only downloads a file that is 261mb instead of the 4.3gig. Anyone know why that is? And I've tried different mirrors and different distros.

That will happen if you try and download to a FAT32 partition. FAT32 partitions cannot handle files larger than 4GB. You have to use a Linux native partition or an NTFS partition.

It can also be caused by the application you're using to download the ISOs. Internet Explorer doesn't handle >4GB files well, for instance - use Firefox or (preferably) a dedicated download app of some kind.

What platform + apps are you using to download on? I wouldn't use Firefox, I don't think it can download files > 2 GB, and almost definitely not > 4 GB. Even if it could, you'd want something more reliable.

aria2 works good for me.

Here's one for the new release...

http://www.metalinker.org/samples/mandriva...86.iso.metalink

This is party wrong, and partly correct.
It's not Firefox the one to blame, it's just that some (= actually the majority of them!) http servers do not allow downloading files larger than 2GB.
For me d4x downloads files larger than 4 GB via http just fine, but if the http server does not support such transfers, there is NOTHING that can be done...
Use an ftp/bittorrent link instead.

Check out:
http://www.kernel.org/faq/#largefiles


Necko - Allow handling of files > 2gig (>2 GB) - Necko is the underlying networking framework for Firefox and this bug is not yet fixed.

True, many http servers don't support files larger than 2 gb. apache didn't even until 2.2/2.0.53.

So yes, you're partly correct

so I guess there are at least three limiting factors: local filesystem, client, server.

There's a new beta of the DownThemAll! (Firefox extension) available.

There are new Metalinks for 2008.0 RC2 DVDs at http://www.metalinker.org/samples.html#mandriva

For those who are interested in downloading Mandriva 2008.0 fast,I have made a metalink for Mandriva 2008.0 x86 dvd iso image.
So just use aria2c with this metalink to download the iso image of the x86 32 bits dvd....



Enjoy....

Besides being fast, the above metalink also contains info for error recovery - so if you've tried downloading this file via another method and got a checksum error, you can use the metalink to repair it. and if you use it from the beginning, it will automatically repair any errors IF you use aria2 (the most advanced metalink client).

here's a page devoted to downloading Mandriva w/ metalink: http://www.metalinker.org/samples/mandriva/

KGet in KDE 4.0 supports metalink now.