Tails

#1 Updated by sharedaccount 2014-08-29 14:46:46

magnet:?xt=urn:bitprint:YCPUYUNEOOZ6EKDWZHRWJ4YXZKWIIJ4T.AGEWHWVPJKG4WYQEMHHSF3HR4KUIICYSWSS3O5A&xt=urn:ed2khash:AC4945FFA8C286C210600E10FC9B7F19&urn:aich:7YLILXU23XHUKLQAFGGCAMWW5YOMCJAQ&xl=1099026432&dn=tails-i386-1.1.iso

#3 Updated by intrigeri 2014-08-29 17:48:10

> Why the download link for Tails is BitTorrent download, which is the least innovative and most screwed P2P network?

Could you please elaborate why BitTorrent is “screwed”, and why we should put additional work, every time we release, into providing other kinds of downloads in addition to HTTP? BitTorrent has been working fine in the context of Tails downloads for 5+ years now..

#4 Updated by sharedaccount 2014-08-31 06:02:17

intrigeri wrote:
> > Why the download link for Tails is BitTorrent download, which is the least innovative and most screwed P2P network?
>
> Could you please elaborate why BitTorrent is “screwed”, and why we should put additional work, every time we release, into providing other kinds of downloads in addition to HTTP? BitTorrent has been working fine in the context of Tails downloads for 5+ years now..

BitTorrent is screwed because you cannot simply share a file by putting it into your shared folder, but you need to make an unnecessary .torrent metafile first. You don’t have to put any additional work - just don’t provide screwed .torrent downloads, only magnet and ed2k links which will work in any good P2P network: eDonkey, Gnutella, Gnutella2 and even partially screwed (heavily centralized) DC.

#5 Updated by sharedaccount 2014-09-02 04:39:12

The link should be:

magnet:?xt=urn:bitprint:YCPUYUNEOOZ6EKDWZHRWJ4YXZKWIIJ4T.AGEWHWVPJKG4WYQEMHHSF3HR4KUIICYSWSS3O5A&xt=urn:ed2khash:AC4945FFA8C286C210600E10FC9B7F19&xt=urn:aich:7YLILXU23XHUKLQAFGGCAMWW5YOMCJAQ&xl=1099026432&dn=tails-i386-1.1.iso

#7 Updated by sharedaccount 2014-09-09 08:33:54

sajolida wrote:
> I understand the idea.
>
> But until now Tor Browser, doesn’t support magnet links. See https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/5556. So I think that this is a blocker for now. We would still have to provide a .torrent file, so the argument about saving us work doesn’t work (it would actually be the opposite).
>
> I’m closing that ticket not to have it rot for too long. Once TBB supports magnet we can reopen it.

Bullshit, it’s impossible to use any P2P program with Tor, to download Tails you still need use to clearnet browser. Please stop discriminating eDonkey/Gnutella networks, or remove .torrent download and leave only the direct HTTP link.

#8 Updated by intrigeri 2014-09-09 13:41:37

> Bullshit, it’s impossible to use any P2P program with Tor, to download Tails you still need use to clearnet browser.

… or download over HTTP from the Tor browser. But you’re right, this problem is orthogonal to the Torrent/ed2k/gnutella topic.

> Please stop discriminating eDonkey/Gnutella networks,

Just to be clear, I think that offering more P2P download options would be good.

It’s not about discriminating, it’s about whether “someone” should do extra work or not, why they should, and who they are. I’ve not seen anything that convinces me that the Tails team should go out of our way and to extra work to support additional P2P download options. Note that IIRC, you’re the first person (or not far) to ask for it since Tails exists, so it’s not as if there was a huge popular demand.

So, if you want to work on it, and provided the needed branches that patch our release process doc, download doc, contribute/how/mirror, and infrastructure to support eDonkey/Gnutella without adding too much work for us at release time, I’m personally happy to spend time reviewing it (but not more). Note that it seems important to avoid making the download page more complicated, so how to display the additional P2P download links needs quite some thought.

> or remove .torrent download and leave only the direct HTTP link.

I fail to see why we should remove a download option that has been working fine forever (initially, Tails downloads were only available over BitTorrent, actually), that a lot of people do use, and that saves a lot of bandwidth from our HTTP mirrors pool (which can’t grow much yet, see Bug #7161).