How to burn mirror of Mandriva 07 repository in DVDs?

[unni]

Hi everybody ,
After spending more than three weeks downloading, I finally managed to mirror the entire x86 Mandriva 2007 repository to my harddisk. Now, I want to burn them on DVDs so that I can free my harddisk (the entire download is over 14 GB!!!) and share with everybody. The problem is that the "Main" and "Contrib" sections are respectively 5 GB and 7.4 GB in size. So, its obvious that I can't simply burn them on DVD without splitting them.
Suppose, I split the "Contrib" section into 2 DVDs-one DVD will contain 4.3 GB of rpms along with the hdlist.cz file and the 2nd DVD will contain the rest of the rpms. If I add these 2 disks to Software Media Manager, I am sure that Mandriva will get confused when I tell it to install a package that has dependencies on these disks. So, please suggest me a method. I am aware that there is a utility in Mandriva that will generate the 'synthsesis.hdlist.cz' file. Is that the only option? If yes, please tell me how to do it?
Also, please suggest a way to check for any changes in the repo (like updates, new packages being added etc) at a later time, while the existing mirror is spread over 5 DVDs.

 

[JGuru]

Better buy a dual-layer DVD & burn 7.4 GB & 5 GB in 2 DVDs. The rest of Mandriva
Linux repository also you can burn in DVDs.

 

[nitish_mythology]

Hi everybody ,
After spending more than three weeks downloading, I finally managed to mirror the entire x86 Mandriva 2007 repository to my harddisk.

Whts the exact meaning of term "mirror"? How does it differs frm downloading?

 

[unni]

Better buy a dual-layer DVD & burn 7.4 GB & 5 GB in 2 DVDs.

Are dual layer DVDs available? I have never seen them in any shops.

Whts the exact meaning of term "mirror"? How does it differs frm downloading?

I apologize for the mixup . I was thinking about something like this (i.e.,mirroring repo) for the past one and a half months that these 2 words kinda began meaning the same for me. Anyway, this is what I did that led me to write the mixed up sentence. I first got the ftp links from easyurpmi website and used FlashGet (in Windows) to download them. After completing all the downloads (Main, Contrib, Updates etc.), I used FireFTP plugin for Firefox to check for changes and synchronize the folders on local side. Thus, I had a mirror of the repository except for the directory structure.

 

[nitish_mythology]

unni
Couldnt get the difference!

 

[mehulved]

What does mirror do?
It reflects back whatever light is thrown at it.
In the same way mirroring something is making an exact replica of it on your computer.
Downloading is a part of mirroring, if I am correct.
In downloading you don't make an exact replica of all the files and the file structure.

 

[nitish_mythology]

hmm.......is it so tht when we download through ftp it is known as Mirroring?
Thanks fr the explanation tech_your_future!

We dont use this term often..

 

[mehulved]

I guess tools like rsync are used for the matter. We don't use it so often cos we never mirror anything, we just create a copy of particular thing.
But, I am sure you must have heard of mirrors while downloading linux distros. Those mirrors make exact replica of what's on the original servers.

 

[kalpik]

A mirror is an exact replica of the entire repository. Online mirrors are actually used for load balancing ie. if all people download from one server only, the server would get starved of bandwidth! So multiple mirrors are made of the server and then people are directed to different mirrors to balance out the load!

 

[eddie]

I used Mandriva long long time ago (in its Mandrake 8.2 times) but iirc hdlist.cz is just an archive with a text file containing name and version of all the rpms in that section. You can open it in ark and see.

If I am right then what you can do is that split Contrib in two parts and create two hdlist.cz as well. Like you take packages with name ranging from A to R (or what ever fills the DVD) and put it on one DVD. You make an hdlist.cz with the names of the packages (copy-paste from original file) ranging from A-R and put it on the first DVD as well. Then you create another hdlist.cz with names ranging from S-Z and put it along with relevant packages on the second DVD. These DVDs should work because Mandriva can handle multiple sources for same section (i.e. contrib) and searches the sources based on the hdlist.cz that they provide.

 

[eagle_y2j]

Whts the exact meaning of term "mirror"? How does it differs frm downloading?

A Web site that is a replica of an already existing site, used to reduce network traffic (hits on a server) or improve the availability of the original site. Mirror sites are useful when the original site generates too much traffic for a single server to support.

Mirror sites also increase the speed with which files or Web sites can be accessed: users can download files more quickly from a server that is geographically closer to them. For example, if a busy New York-based Web site sets up a mirror site in England, users in Europe can access the mirror site faster than the original site in New York.

 

[nitish_mythology]

Thanks fr the explanation eagle_y2j and Kalpik!

 

[unni]

Re: How to burn mirror of Mandriva 07 repository in DVDs? [Solved]

Sorry for this late reply. I found how to do this.

unni
Couldnt get the difference!

Sorry man. I thought that it was I who had made the mistake, and that you were pointing it out. That's why I replied like that. When I used the terms "mirror" and "download", I had in my mind exactly what tech_your_future, eagle_y2j and Kalpik told you.

__________________________________________My solution____________________________________

There is a utility in Mandriva called genhdlist which can be used to generate the required hdlist.cz, synthesiz.hdlist.cz & md5sum files for any group of rpms. To get what I had in my mind, I split each of the sections into DVD sized ones. Thus, I had 4 folders named DVD-1, DVD-2, DVD-3 & DVD-4. The contents on each are as follows:
Main part-1(4.2 GB) on DVD-1
Main part-2+Contrib part-1 (800 MB + 3.5 GB) on DVD-2
Contrib part-2 (4 GB) on DVD-3
PLF Free+PLF Non Free+Others (2.1 GB) on DVD-4
Updates (800 MB) on DVD-4

Here the names in bold represent folder names. Then, I created a subfolder under each with the name media_info_custom. After that, I launched the terminal and changed directory to one of these main (not Main) folders, and issued the command genhdlist --md5sum --subdir media_info_custom. After sometime, the required files were generated under the media_info_custom subfolder. Then, I burned them on DVDs and added as media to Software Manager.

The only problem is that you can have only one main folder in each DVD. The reason is that, when you select software for installation in which different rpms are located in different discs, urpmi will automatically eject the drive, ask you to insert the correct medium, copies rpms that are present in it, ejects it again and asks you to insert the next medium, and so on. So, if more than one medium/folder say 5 folders) is present in the same disc, and if it needs to copy files from these 5 'media', it will eject the drive 5 times even though the disc is the same for all 5. So, I had to put all the PLF Free, PLF Non Free, Extra etc. sections into a single folder.

____________________________________End of my solution________________________________

I used Mandriva long long time ago (in its Mandrake 8.2 times) but iirc hdlist.cz is just an archive with a text file containing name and version of all the rpms in that section.You can open it in ark and see.

I tried to open the hdlist.cz file in Ark. But it gave me an error indicating unsupported archive type.

 

[gary4gar]

^^^
try opening it with nano and then see

 

[unni]

^^^
try opening it with nano and then see

Opening with nano gives lot of funny characters. I am sure this .cz file is an archive file because I opened it using WinRAR in Windows.