Kubuntu recently had to pull our 17.10 ISOs because of the so-called lenovo bug. Now that this bug is fixed, the ISOs have been respun, and so now it's time to begin to reseed the torrents.
To speed up the process, I wanted to zsync to the original ISOs before getting the new torrent files. Simon kindly told me the easy way to do this - cd to the directory where the ISOs live, which in my case is
cd /media/valorie/Data/ISOs/
Next:
cp kubuntu-17.10{,.1}-desktop-amd64.iso && zsync http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/kubuntu/releases/17.10.1/release/kubuntu-17.10.1-desktop-amd64.iso.zsync
Where did I get the link to zsync? At http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/kubuntu/releases/17.10.1/release/. All ISOs are found at cdimage, just as all torrents are found at http://torrent.ubuntu.com:6969/.
The final step is to download those torrent files (pro-tip: use control F) and tell Ktorrent to seed them all! I seed all the supported Ubuntu releases. The more people do this, the faster torrents are for everyone. If you have the bandwidth, go for it!
PS: you don't have to copy all the cdimage URLs. Just up-arrow and then back-arrow through your previous command once the sync has finished, edit it, hit return and you are back in business.
Showing posts with label ISO. Show all posts
Showing posts with label ISO. Show all posts
Thursday, January 11, 2018
Saturday, August 5, 2017
Keysigning!
There are a couple of reasons to create a network of trust, using gpg keys. If you are a software developer and want to sign your commits, and on a larger stage, sign software releases, you need a key pair. On a distribution level, ISOs are signed as well. In Ubuntu, a GPG key is required to sign the Code of Conduct.
On a personal level, emails and other communications and files can be signed and/or encrypted. In this era of wide-spread spoofed emails and more and more efforts to snoop into our every move, gpg is a tool we can use to prove our identity and be able to rely on gpg-signed emails.
I attended a keysigning at Akademy, which involved a few steps. First, generating a key pair. This is amazingly easy: gpg --gen-key . Various options are discussed here, among other places: http://www.cryptnet.net/fdp/crypto/keysigning_party/en/keysigning_party.html#keypair_generation. This site and many others describes how to immediately create a revocation certificate, just in case. This is not difficult either. Finally, send your key pair to a keyserver, and your fingerprint to the person running the keysigning event, or print out the fingerprint yourself.
At the keysigning, you will check to see that your own fingerprint is correct as provided by the host, and that each person at the event has valid identification proving they are who they say they are.
The final step to creating your web of trust is signing those keys. Some people have an additional step before signing and uploading; that of sending an encrypted email to each person to establish that both keys work. Since I created my key pair using my gmail address, I was having some difficulty with decrypting some of those emails using "mailvelope", a gmail addon. Bhushan Shah told me that I can download the raw encrypted email and then decrypt that file by gpg --decrypt filename.txt . Excellent!
gpg --encrypt filename.txt recipientkeyID works as well.
Now I've found and am trying out GooPG which is interesting, and seems to work. Nothing seems to be able to read the email I got from Launchpad to verify my uploaded key, however. :( The actual code block throws a CRC error.
To sum up: be a geek, do some key signing, and sign your emails! And when needed, encrypt them.
PS: Martin Bednar asked where to find the Google extension. None of my browsers let me answer comments (or even make comments) directly, so here is the link: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/goopg/ifpoaednafmgolabhpjmbimllaoidelg
On a personal level, emails and other communications and files can be signed and/or encrypted. In this era of wide-spread spoofed emails and more and more efforts to snoop into our every move, gpg is a tool we can use to prove our identity and be able to rely on gpg-signed emails.
I attended a keysigning at Akademy, which involved a few steps. First, generating a key pair. This is amazingly easy: gpg --gen-key . Various options are discussed here, among other places: http://www.cryptnet.net/fdp/crypto/keysigning_party/en/keysigning_party.html#keypair_generation. This site and many others describes how to immediately create a revocation certificate, just in case. This is not difficult either. Finally, send your key pair to a keyserver, and your fingerprint to the person running the keysigning event, or print out the fingerprint yourself.
At the keysigning, you will check to see that your own fingerprint is correct as provided by the host, and that each person at the event has valid identification proving they are who they say they are.
The final step to creating your web of trust is signing those keys. Some people have an additional step before signing and uploading; that of sending an encrypted email to each person to establish that both keys work. Since I created my key pair using my gmail address, I was having some difficulty with decrypting some of those emails using "mailvelope", a gmail addon. Bhushan Shah told me that I can download the raw encrypted email and then decrypt that file by gpg --decrypt filename.txt . Excellent!
gpg --encrypt filename.txt recipientkeyID works as well.
Now I've found and am trying out GooPG which is interesting, and seems to work. Nothing seems to be able to read the email I got from Launchpad to verify my uploaded key, however. :( The actual code block throws a CRC error.
To sum up: be a geek, do some key signing, and sign your emails! And when needed, encrypt them.
PS: Martin Bednar asked where to find the Google extension. None of my browsers let me answer comments (or even make comments) directly, so here is the link: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/goopg/ifpoaednafmgolabhpjmbimllaoidelg
Saturday, June 21, 2014
Metalinks, an excellent fast way to download KDE files
My G+ repost of Harald's announcement of the Plasma Next ISOs got some complaints about slow downloads. When I checked the with KDE sysadmins, I got some great information.
First, torrents aren't available, since 1. that requires dedicated tracker software, which isn't needed since 2. KDE doesn't distribute many large files.
However, files available at http://files.kde.org/snapshots/ and http://download.kde.org have a Details tab, where metalinks and mirrors are listed. I knew nothing about metalinks, but we could all benefit from them when downloading large files.
PovAddict (Nicolas Alvarez) told me that he uses the commandline for them: `aria2c http://files.kde.org/snapshots/neon5-201406200837.iso.metalink` for instance. I had to install aria2c for this to work; and the file took less than 15 minutes to download.
I read man wget and it seems not to support metalinks; at least I didn't find a reference.
Bshah (Bushan Shah) tried with kget and says it works very well. He said, New Download > Paste metalink > it will ask which files to download.
He also found the nice Wikipedia page for me: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metalink
Thanks to bcooksley, PovAddict and bshaw for their help.
PS: Bcooksley adds, the .mirrorlist url is generally what we recommend for people to use anyway. So even if you don't point to the metalink, please use the .mirrorlist URL when posting a file hosted at download.kde.org or files.kde.org. If people forget to do that, click that Details link to get there for the hashes, lists of mirrors, and metalink files.
First, torrents aren't available, since 1. that requires dedicated tracker software, which isn't needed since 2. KDE doesn't distribute many large files.
However, files available at http://files.kde.org/snapshots/ and http://download.kde.org have a Details tab, where metalinks and mirrors are listed. I knew nothing about metalinks, but we could all benefit from them when downloading large files.
PovAddict (Nicolas Alvarez) told me that he uses the commandline for them: `aria2c http://files.kde.org/snapshots/neon5-201406200837.iso.metalink` for instance. I had to install aria2c for this to work; and the file took less than 15 minutes to download.
I read man wget and it seems not to support metalinks; at least I didn't find a reference.
Bshah (Bushan Shah) tried with kget and says it works very well. He said, New Download > Paste metalink > it will ask which files to download.
He also found the nice Wikipedia page for me: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metalink
Thanks to bcooksley, PovAddict and bshaw for their help.
PS: Bcooksley adds, the .mirrorlist url is generally what we recommend for people to use anyway. So even if you don't point to the metalink, please use the .mirrorlist URL when posting a file hosted at download.kde.org or files.kde.org. If people forget to do that, click that Details link to get there for the hashes, lists of mirrors, and metalink files.
Friday, October 8, 2010
Necessity, Mother of Learning Zsync
I don't need to invent, just learn! My recent Kubuntu update from Lucid to Maverick RC broke YouTube. Actually, it broke my ATI graphics card driver, and the cure, as Jussi told me, is to re-install Maverick.
I have the alpha ISO on my hard drive, and slow as my Internet connection is here sometimes, I really didn't want to download essentially the same file AGAIN. Zsync to the rescue! As explained here, https://help.ubuntu.com/community/ZsyncCdImage, if you use zsync on a ISO CDimage, you will get only the parts you need, not what you already have. So, I downloaded zsync, and did the command
This is a wonderful tool for ISO testers to use, since you will not have to constantly download almost identical files. *Learned another tip about zsync from MJEvans at today's Maverick Release Party. Change the name of your old file to be identical to that of the new file before starting the process, and it will happen without any need to add additional filenames to the command line. Clever! Thank you Michael!
In Kubuntu, there is a magic program called usb-creator-kde. After the ISO is written to my little USB drive, all that remains is backing up my home partition -- just in case! And then re-installing Maverick Meerkat. I'll update this if anymore learning takes place!
Update: The download and write processes described above both went perfectly. However, the daily file I chose to install was NOT a perfect fit for my equipment, and I made a bad choice, in retrospect, in choosing to attempt a fresh install when I did. More details in another post.
I have the alpha ISO on my hard drive, and slow as my Internet connection is here sometimes, I really didn't want to download essentially the same file AGAIN. Zsync to the rescue! As explained here, https://help.ubuntu.com/community/ZsyncCdImage, if you use zsync on a ISO CDimage, you will get only the parts you need, not what you already have. So, I downloaded zsync, and did the command
zsync http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/kubuntu/daily/20101007/maverick-alternate-amd64.iso.zsyncYou will need to replace the cdimage URL to the one you want, of course! Rather than taking over 3 hours, as it did to download the alpha, it took about ten minutes!
This is a wonderful tool for ISO testers to use, since you will not have to constantly download almost identical files. *Learned another tip about zsync from MJEvans at today's Maverick Release Party. Change the name of your old file to be identical to that of the new file before starting the process, and it will happen without any need to add additional filenames to the command line. Clever! Thank you Michael!
In Kubuntu, there is a magic program called usb-creator-kde. After the ISO is written to my little USB drive, all that remains is backing up my home partition -- just in case! And then re-installing Maverick Meerkat. I'll update this if anymore learning takes place!
Update: The download and write processes described above both went perfectly. However, the daily file I chose to install was NOT a perfect fit for my equipment, and I made a bad choice, in retrospect, in choosing to attempt a fresh install when I did. More details in another post.
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