[KLUG Members] OpenSuSe Patch CDs

[Bruce Smith]

> Nope, not gonna happen.  But I suppose you could copy the whole thing to
> a USB drive and carry that around.  I've just never tried.

Yes, if you have a USB 2.0 highspeed hard drive, that should work.

> > As for my updates, personally I mirror the updates from a FTP server in
> > a nightly cron job and run my own internal FTP server to update all of
> > my machines.  That way the updates are only downloaded once.
> 
> My checking has showed that if you run HTTP updates via a SQUID proxy
> with a really large maximum cacheed object size it is pretty uncommon
> for updates to get downloaded more than once.  Although I do understand
> what you are doing.

I doubt I'm saving any bandwidth, considering that I'm probably
downloading updates that I'll never use.  Bandwidth is not why I use
this method.  Even though some of my machines are in the DMZ and don't
have access to the proxy server.

I mainly do it for speed and convenience.  The FTP update happens in the
middle of the night.  I get emailed the results of the update and I use
that to be informed of new updates available.  When I'm ready to update
my machines, it happens much faster going to a local FTP server.

I also mirror the updates to my laptop (which also has a FTP server), so
I can update my home PC's, and other boxes with limited internet.  FWIW.

> > I also copy my install CD to an ISO image on my hard drive and mount the
> > ISO image (loopback) in the FTP server's tree so all my machines can add
> > new software without accessing the internet too.  (I set the install
> > source to my FTP server).
> 
> That it pretty interesting,  I've never tried that.

It fits in the same FTP tree as the updates, and is also very fast and
convenient to add software to any machine on my LAN without having to go
mount a CD/DVD on boxes in other rooms.  Works good for me.  :-)

 - BS