Just a very simple idea regarding DVD download

[mami_hacky]

Hi,
Searching in the posts here in this forum you will see many people have problem with downloading a big 4Gbytes file. Personally I'm one of them and I have a question.

My question and idea is very simple and I'm wondering why the admins of KNOPPIX have not used this simple solution to share the 4Gbytes DVD file.

When we want to share a big file with others ( a movie for example ) we split it into many smaller files. for example a 4Gbytes file can be splitted into 8 files each 500Mbytes. ( using RAR or i don't know, similar methods )

This way:
1- every body can download smaller files easier
2- files can be shared using HTTP ( FTP has many limitations, do you think every body in this world has a high performance internet connection as the one you have? )
3- CRC and checksum will be calculated automatically when exctrating the downloaded files and so, no need to doing this manually

Please note that not every body in this world has a 100Mbit/s permanent connection! these good things are available only in germany, us, and some other limited number of countries.
would you please share a splitted copy of DVD iso as well?
( Then do a statistical analysis after a month and see which of the main iso file and the splitted set of files is downloaded more. use that solution since then )

[kirol]

I'd suggest using either bittorrent, or just "wget -c" from one of the mirrors (this allows HHTP/FTP downloads in several resumed sessions). In the later case do not forget to verify the checksum before burning.

[mami_hacky]

OK!

Bittorrent, as you know needs ports other than 80 , and here, in most of the locations in my country they have closed most of the other porst and so using torrent is not feasible.
As you see in many posts using torrent has problems.

wget -c, ok! I said, FTP is much more limitted than HTTP. for example, the proxy server here is so that FTP resuming is not possible for us.

Generally HTTP is more popular than FTP and so better support is available for it.

now please tell me, why not sharing the file as a set of splitted , for example, rar files?

[mami_hacky]

No reply?.....
still waiting .....

[Harry Kuhman]

now please tell me, why not sharing the file as a set of splitted , for example, rar files?

still waiting ...
RAR files are used commonly on usenet where dropped, missing or corrupt segments are common (as are par and par2 files to help repair them). But I can't think of any time that I have seem them used for normal Internet downloads. You very well might find Knoppix posted from time to time in a newsgroup, but with all your other access problems I would not be surprised to see that you don't have access to usenet either.

It's not clear to me why you are seeing so many blockage problems. If this is an employer situation then they are certainly free to block downloads if they desire, and it's really not the place of the Linux community to try to circumvent that. If it's your own Internet Service Provider, vote with your money and fnd a more reasonable ISP, one who understands that the Internet is far more than just access to web pages. If it's an Internet cafe then I can understand them wanting to protect their systems from the many viruses and trojans that are on the Internet, but not to the extent that it makes the service so limited that you can't download the ISO. Particularly when there are free virtual machines that they could use to let users download anything they want or even install anything they want, since the next user would and should just get a new fresh copy of the virtual machine. This would both protect the next user from anything the previous users did on the system, and protect the previous users from having password containing cookies or cached information found by later users. So if it's Internet cafe's that are the problem I would have a chat with a few cafe operators and either find one that is running the system the proper way or who will at least open the ports that you need, or one that that will hire you to set him up properly.

It may not happen that the way Knoppix is made available for download would change just for what seems like your local issue.

[mami_hacky]

OK! thanks for your reply,
This is unfortunately the problem of our entire country.

just as an answer to you, "when rar is used?" you can see a very wide usage of rar in rapidshare. ( full of splitted rar archives, usually for sharing big files )

I just wanted to say:
when better solutions are available than putting a big 4G DVD on a site, why not use them?
Yes, may be this is my local issue, but I'm completely sure that even those persons with high bandwidth internet will be able to download the splitted archive more easily.

any how,
good luck.

[Harry Kuhman]

This is unfortunately the problem of our entire country.
I still don't understand what type of service this is that you speak of. Are you saying that even with your own Internet account that you pay a service provider for, you have ports blocked that keep you from doing much other than just use a browser, and this is true no matter which Internet Service Provider you use? Can you use Skype? Or IRC? Or Net meeting? I've seen statistics that indicate that more than half of all internet traffic, by volume, is now BitTorrent traffic. It's just amazing to me that people paying for Internet accounts would be willing to miss most of the Internet.

I had not heard of the term rapidshare, but a Google search tells me that you are talking about a free Gerrman website for posting files. Because they limit the size of any one file uploaded, huge files must be split into many parts. So this explains why people use rar files to split large files there. But in general the rest of the world can use BitTorrent, or they can download by FTP or HTML and if needed they can stop and resume their downloads. In such a case, making a rar archive only adds an extra step of complexity to the download process, one that, unfortunately but true, would confuse a lot of people and add increase the support requests for anyone offering downloads and offering support, and is not justified by the bandwidth savings that a compressed rar file set would offer. Cleary someone could post a rar set of the Knoppix DVD, or even the CD, if they felt there was the need, but I don't see this being done by anyone for Knoppix, and I still don't see RARs used by anyone posting their own files, just by people posting in news groups or now on this rapidshare website that restricts upload size.

[mami_hacky]

Hi

OK! thanks for reply,

I should find a way to download it, ( praying god! nothing more to do. )

[Jacky]

Just my humble suggestion, why not try ordering and buying the Knoppix DVD and getting it by airmail? This earlier thread listed one place where you can order it: http://www.knoppix.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=24301 The prices were quite reasonable (almost nominal) and in my case, the disk took just 7 days to travel halfway around the world. 7 days is not a long time to wait, and by the time you figure out all the problems downloading the DVD, or exploring the CD version, the airmail DVD would have arrived.