Debian Jigdo mini-HOWTO

Peter Jay Salzman

<p at dirac.orgZZZ>

2005-12-05 ver 1.8

Abstract

Getting Debian ISOs has always been a painful, slow and supremely inefficient process. Jigdo is a tool for distributing and obtaining Debian ISOs in an easy, fast and very efficient manner. This HOWTO describes why you should use jigdo, a little bit about how it works and how you use it to get and update Debian ISOs.

Jigdo is a very general tool, and isn't tied specifically to Debian ISOs. The jigdo tools can be used to make any ISO available for download in the same easy, fast and efficient manner they're used for Debian ISOs. This HOWTO will cover this as well, but we'll focus primarily on downloading Debian ISOs.

Table of Contents

1. Administrata

1.1. Authorship and Copyright
1.2. Acknowledgements
1.3. Comments and Corrections
1.4. Latest Version And Translations

2. Why jigdo?

2.1. How Does One Get A Debian ISO Image Set?
2.2. Why Not Download The Whole ISO Image?
2.3. What Is Jigdo?

3. How Jigdo Works (optional)

3.1. Preparing The ISO For Download
3.2. The .template File
3.3. The .jigdo File
3.4. Downloading The Image

4. Downloading Your First Image (In 5 Easy Steps)

4.1. Install Jigdo
4.2. Download The .template And .jigdo Files
4.3. Run jigdo-lite
4.4. Specify A Mirror
4.5. Downloading Of The ISO

5. Updating Your Image

6. Frequently Asked Questions

6.1. Why does jidgo ask twice for scanning for existing files? Is it enough to say yes once ?
6.2. Jigdo Has Problems Downloading Certain Filenames.
6.3. How do I make jigdo use my proxy?
6.4. Jigdo-lite fails with an error - have I downloaded all those MBs in vain?
6.5. [11 Aug 2002]: Why aren't the translations of this HOWTO on LDP?
6.6. What do I do if my jigdo download gets interrupted?
6.7. My jigdo download won't complete because the .jigdo file is broken. When I download a new, fixed .jigdo file, do I need to download all the data over again?
6.8. Can I use jigdo to download images for DVD?
6.9. Can I burn the .iso.tmp file to CD?
6.10. Jigdo-lite is broken! It downloads packages and deletes them. I know it doesn't write them to the iso.tmp file because the file size doesn't change!
6.11. I'm having trouble getting jigdo-easy to work.
6.12. For image updates, I want jigdo-lite to scan 14 loop-mounted images in one go. How can I do this?
6.13. Jigdo-lite is too verbose. How can I supress some or all of its messages?
6.14. Can I use jigdo on platforms other than Linux?
6.15. On MS Windows, why do I get a "No such file or directory" error message?
6.16. On MS Windows, why won't my image grow larger than 2GB?
6.17. On MS Windows, jigdo-lite.bat fails with an error message saying "sh" was not found.
6.18. Can I run multiple instances of jigdo-lite to download images in parallel?
6.19. Is there a GUI interface available?

7. Errata

7.1. jigdo-easy
7.2. More About Scan Sources
7.3. jigdo-file-cache.db
7.4. Resources