Upgrade "forever"?

[thnewguy]

Does ZFS need to be installed on 64-bit? I have been Googling - with words like "ZFS low RAM" and I have seen rumours that ZFS will not perform well on 32-bit. Apparently using ZFS on a low-spec machine can cause kernel panics!

Using ZFS does not require a 64-bit OS. All of my installs of ZFS have been on 32-bit operating systems (again with low RAM specs) and it hasn't caused any problems.

[David30]

How about P2P? Faster and more reliable than ol' good HTTP/FTP.

How would P2P help with upgrading PC-BSD?

[Abdul]

How would P2P help with upgrading PC-BSD?

I think I should have made the quote above my post shorter (fixed already).
The comment was not directly related to the update process but to a considered improvement to the way files are downloaded.
Failover servers are so 90s...we've had much better ways of ensuring availability for years already.

[David30]

So if the updater were to change mirror servers on the fly and finds the fastest one, is that a good thing? How would P2P be a better option, especially when some servers are much slower than others?

Don't forget that the updater will download MANY files.

[sg1efc]

How about P2P? Faster and more reliable than ol' good HTTP/FTP.

Do you mean using torrent protocol?

[Abdul]

So if the updater were to change mirror servers on the fly and finds the fastest one, is that a good thing? How would P2P be a better option, especially when some servers are much slower than others?

Don't forget that the updater will download MANY files.

Simply, clients can download from MANY servers at once. And in fact they should act as servers too to make traffic peaks self-supporting.

Do you mean using torrent protocol?

Could be. The most popular option for sure.

[David30]

Simply, clients can download from MANY servers at once. And in fact they should act as servers too to make traffic peaks self-supporting.

Would the files still be checksummed using P2P? Files can get corrupted in transit; it doesn't happen very often, but it does happen.

What do the developers of PC-BSD think about using P2P for updates?

I know the Chromebook always keeps itself up-to-date, but I don't know how it does this, because I don't own one. I think comparing PC-BSD to a Chromebook is another topic altogether.

[kmoore134]

Using a torrent model is something we may consider, alongside a CDN of some type, so we don't have to do mirrors at all, which I also feel is antiquated in many ways.

[Abdul]

Would the files still be checksummed using P2P? Files can get corrupted in transit; it doesn't happen very often, but it does happen.

All P2P protocols that I know use cryptographic checksums and when a piece of a file comes corrupted, it gets redownloaded from another peer.

Using a torrent model is something we may consider, alongside a CDN of some type, so we don't have to do mirrors at all, which I also feel is antiquated in many ways.

Sounds good.

[Tigersharke]

Mirrors in a global sense, where connectivity might be strained to start with, I would feel as still appropriate. If another solution means a reduction of mirrors along with general improvements (reliability not affected) then I'd be all for it. Opt-in torrenting would be generally reasonable especially since a significant segment keeps their pc on and online.