torrents for FreeBSD ISOs?

[Lowell Gilbert]

"Jeremy C. Reed" <reed at reedmedia.net> writes:

> On Sat, 24 Sep 2005, Lowell Gilbert wrote:
> 
> >> Are there any active torrents for FreeBSD ISOs?
> >>
> >> I used torrent file as found via FreeBSD 5.4 announcement. But for
> >> over 30 minutes ctorrent timed out attempting to retrieve it.
> >>
> >> I had used it with great success and speed in May.
> >
> > Torrents are really only useful for files that a lot of people want to
> > download at the same time.  There's just no reason to keep it going now.
> > [Not that I have any specific knowledge about whether the seeder is
> > still running.]
> 
> Thanks for the response. That is what I was thinking.
> 
> I am teaching a class and hoped to cover version 6.0 but when
> 6.0-BETA4-i386-bootonly.iso failed on my laptop due to some vr0 LOR
> error (I found was already known[1] but not in a PR and I don't know
> if it is fixed), I realized that I shouldn't use it since I can't test
> the hardware in my classroom ahead of time.

Regardless of which release you are using, you really want to test on
the target hardware ahead of time.

> And I read that 5.5 was to be released in September but no other
> news.

It's been delayed because 6.0 is delayed.  There aren't enough release
engineers to work on both releases at once.

>       So decided to download 5.4 release again. Anyways, I got the ISO
> after an hour or so.

I would expect an academic to have pretty good connectivity.  Sounds
like it.

> Maybe FreeBSD could provide torrent "servers" that are always running
> just in case that someone attempts it? (I don't know a lot about
> torrent though, but I assume that that is doable.)

It is certainly possible.  Bear in mind, though, that the torrents for
the releases are still an experimental distribution mechanism.  And
for a *single* downloader, FTP is faster than Bittorrent, so even if
the torrent were still running, you would have been better off with
conventional downloading techniques.