[mirror-admin] is there a checksum list?

[Carlos Carvalho]

David Timms (dtimms at iinet.net.au) wrote on 24 March 2008 23:56:
 >Carlos Carvalho wrote:
 >> I'd like to verify checksums of the whole distribution from time to
 >> time. rsync does it when the file is pulled but corruption may happen
 >> later and might go unnoticed for a long time.
 >
 >rsync -c tells the both local and remote rsync to generate checksums and 
 >compare them, rather than relying on only date/time/size {my 
 >understanding once the file has been transferred once}.
 >
 >It puts a big load on both the source and receiver CPU/disk, but very 
 >little data is transferred - ie only when needed.  Given the high CPU 
 >load though, I don't know it it is fair enough to run against any of the 
 >upstream fedora mirrors ?

The biggest problem is disk access because reads are scattered. It's a
load that larger mirrors cannot handle. We block it at the rsync
config. Cpu load is negligible for modern machines.

Also, these tests are not necessary at every update, leading to more
complex mirror management.

It seems that for now the most convenient would be to use rpm to check
the packages. The disadvantages are that one must use rpm to decipher
the package format and it doesn't cover all files.

It'd be better if a list of checksums were created in a single file,
making it easy to use md5sum or sha* to check them. A simple script at
the masters could do it, if they can hold the disk load. This is done
by a few other distributions.

--