[tex-live] mirroring the texlive archive/ selectively

[Karl Berry]

            Could you please give a link to that posting in an archive?
            (Message-Id: would be more than enough.)

Sorry, I don't have Message-Id's memorized :).  You can search the
archives as well as I can.  Anyway, I think you are already well beyond
the point where you need it.

	However, I see that I can test the integrity with $ lzma -t.  I
	hope that LZMA checksums are good enough for the purpose.

Not sure.  But in any case, as Norbert corrected me, there are md5's in
the .tlpobj files.
	
	Isn't it the installation .tlpdb that gets rebuilt?  

Yes.

	The idea is to rebuild the one that's on the mirror:
        http://ctan.example.org/pub/CTAN/systems/texlive/tlnet/2008/tlpkg/texlive.tlpdb

Ah, I was not understanding.

	Note that the intent is to have a partial mirror.  
	How would, e. g., install-tl behave should some of the files
	mentioned in .tlpdb (and queried for the installation) be
	unavailable from the mirror?

If install-tl (or tlmgr) tries to download package x, and x is not
available on the mirror, it aborts, last I checked.  Maybe there could
be a --keep-going option.  Patches welcome.

Maybe if you refrain from ever asking for the package it would work.
I mean, if your partial mirror matches the collections which you have
installed, then the extra entries in the mirror's tlpdb probably
wouldn't hurt?  Not sure, never tried it.

But in general, arbitrarily slicing and dicing in new ways won't work
with the existing tools.

karl