DragonFly mirrors & ISO distribution

["Anthony L. Bryan" <albryan@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi,

I've put up a metalink for DragonFly BSD at
http://www.metalinker.org/samples/dfly-1.6.0_REL.iso.gz.metalink

Metalinks are useful for large files like ISOs and contain mirror and p2p
locations along with checksums and other metadata. It's an XML file and
here's a good description:

'Metalink makes complex download pages obsolete by replacing long lists of
download mirrors and BitTorrent trackers with a single .metalink file. As
you might have already guessed, a .metalink file is a file that tells a
download manager all the different ways it can download a file. The file
itself takes the form of an open XML standard that can list an unlimited
number of HTTP and FTP sources as well as BitTorrent trackers and ed2k and
magnet links.'
(http://www.downloadsquad.com/2006/08/28/metalinks-integrated-bittorrent-htt
p-and-ftp-downloads/)

Right now, Metalinks are used by OpenOffice.org, many Linux/BSD
distributions, and soon kernel.org. Hopefully they could be useful to you
too. FreeBSD might use it for ports (http://wiki.freebsd.org/Metalink). Here
are some other examples:

http://distribution.openoffice.org/p2p/magnet.html
http://en.opensuse.org/Released_Version#Metalink
http://desktopbsd.net/index.php?id=73
http://www.pcbsd.org/?p=download
http://www.archlinux.org/download/

Metalinks are supported by a number of download managers on Unix, Mac, and
Win. There are 2 for unix, a command line version
(http://aria2.sourceforge.net/) and one with a GUI.

If you have any questions, please contact me.

(( Anthony Bryan
 )) Metalink [ http://www.metalinker.org ]