High cost of patches

[Michael James]

Now that ftp://mirror.aarnet.edu.au/pub/suse exists
 I am doing much better with the Suse online update
 but would like to use the already downloaded patches
 to update another machine.

A feature I can't find in any of the Linux online update mechanisms
 (haven't tried Debian or OpenBSD yet)
 is to be able to configure the update tool
 with an ordered list of patch sources like CPAN.

eg: perhaps it would look something like this:
	1 the patch directory on the local hard drive,
	2 the local NFS server
	3 the cover CD from PC mag
	4 a transact internal mirror??
	5 mirror.aarnet.edu.au
	5 the distro home site

Does anyone know a distro with this kind of functionality?

Or thinking about adding it externally,
 which distros have an HTTP based fetch mechanism that allows a proxy?
I could configure my local squid to hold the patches for me.

Or better I could write some perl URL re-writing rules
 that would implement the prefered source policy
 with cache management based on keeping patches
 till a more recent version appeared.

Even within the FTP protocol it would be possible to write a sort of proxy.
Since FTP requests do not contain the name of the server
 all the proxy knows is the path to the file.
It would have to splice on the server name based on its list.
Each mirror-family would need a seperate proxy with its specific list.

I run an internal DNS putting all my machines into localdomain.
So declare a domain "ftp-proxy.localdomain."
 with "suse.ftp-proxy.localdomain."
 as a secondary IP on my server.
It effectively forms a demand driven mirror.

I started typing this as glibc-devel.rpm started downloading
 and 74% has filtered through a 56K modem.
Would I love to have it arrive at 100 Meg for free!
The more machines you maintain, the more interesting it gets.

michaelj
-- 
A right not exercised is a privilege
a privilege not exercised is illegal.

Michael James			michael at james.st
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