Version: (using KDE 4.0.1) Installed from: SuSE RPMs OS: Linux Metalinks contain mirror, checksum, & other information for downloads in an XML format. Most Metalinks also include chunk checksums (aka partial file checksums, as opposed to full file checksums) for segments of a file. These chunk checksums can be used to determine if a segment of the download is corrupted. If so, the corrupted chunk can be requested again. For large downloads, where Metalinks are frequently used, this can save users considerable time and hassle, along with saved bandwidth. This is one of the most important Metalink features, I hope KGet can support it. Example Metalinks with chunk checksums can be found at http://download.packages.ro/metalink/openoffice/ The <pieces> section here contains an example of chunk checksums, some of which have been excised (...) to save space. <verification> <hash type="md5">74c20c8c4f5df40958278a148feec93b</hash> <hash type="sha1">0145902fe029c6b6e98ceb4d70715367f0bf462a</hash> <hash type="ed2k">af9ae7c710d769abee63d273429a40d7</hash> <pieces length="1048576" type="sha1"> <hash piece="0">4a183d5f17bc8db275f7ad8be821432275d34d9e</hash> <hash piece="1">7dcc2812b6f3422f3bf5ec9a4bbd76444b1d072c</hash> <hash piece="2">a1e4b602c151a464a77f81ac27d41712cfa6ba3f</hash> ... <hash piece="136">b7c9cb2306c42b825d0bae212ae89ebd1f25fa44</hash> <hash piece="137">58c5a413f32702e5b3ad75568f60d608e287406e</hash> </pieces> </verification>
Good idea =) That will especially useful for multisourcedownloads for metalink. Thx Lukas
yes, it would definitely be great for multisource downloads! enough distributions use Metalink for ISO downloads, and errors in a 600MB to 3 GB file can be extremely frustrating. errors can be repaired w/ aria2 & metalinks (or by torrents, rsync) but we want things to be as easy for the user as possible. for instance, he's an openSUSE page on Metalinks: http://en.opensuse.org/Metalink most of the page covers how to repair a download, doing things that many users would rather not do. the information to repair the file is already in the .metalink, so hopefully more Metalink clients will make things easier on the user :) I think if KGet supported repairing downloads w/ Metalinks, it would be the preferred download method for ISOs, instead of plain FTP/HTTP, for distributions. I mean, who wouldn't want simpler, error proof downloads?
Yes, it would be great!
In trunk now, though at the moment the checks are only done when the download finished and then (if needed) a repair starts.