more automated fetch of ISO-IMAGES & ports

["Julian Stacey" <jhs_(_at_)_berklix_(_dot_)_org>]

Hi stable@ people,
Idea for a SOC or other development:

Not all ftp sites carry betas (understandably), that raises an inefficiency
of human & net resources also seen similarly on ports/ , eg:

I tried to download 7.2-BETA to test, Not on local
	ftp://ftp2.de.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/releases/i386/ISO-IMAGES/7.2
	ftp://ftp.de.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/releases/i386/ISO-IMAGES/7.2
Found manually on 
	ftp://ftp.uk.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/releases/i386/ISO-IMAGES/7.2
	but slow at 60 KB/s
Faster @ 100K from USA
	ftp://ftp.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/releases/i386/ISO-IMAGES/7.2
	but I'd feel guilty loading main site & intercontinental band width.

One could rustle up a ports/ entry to fetch ISO-IMAGES automatically
from a list of nearest local national sites, using MASTER_SITE_BACKUP
&/or MASTER_SITE_OVERRIDE, But does a pseudo port or tool exist already ?

Choosing ftp site just by country is crude, (albeit better
than global as once was), but if client is near national border,
another country's adjacent city might be a nearer & faster server.

Some servers for ports/ fetch are also incredibly slow, but fetch will
hang in there trying, even if another site lower in the list might
be nearer &/or faster.

Perhaps some SOC student might like to develop some extension to
fetch, or a new tool to intelligently save net bandwidth & human
time (if not this year if SOC bids are in, then next) :
	Intelligently & automatically sniff fetch list to see where
	stuff is, measure the bandwidth, perhaps on a preliminary
	README, & automatically decide where to fetch from.
	& as 2nd stage, give up & try elsewhere if the server 
	connection gets too bad.

Cheers,
Julian
--
Julian Stacey: BSDUnixLinux C Prog Admin SysEng Consult Munich www.berklix.com
  Mail plain ASCII text.  HTML & Base64 text are spam. www.asciiribbon.org
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