lubuntu-qa team mailing list archive

[Jonathan Marsden <jmarsden@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Ali and team,

On 06/18/2013 10:25 AM, Ali Linx (amjjawad) wrote:

> I'm still so confused and can't really understand what is going on?

> Anyway, I'm downloading a new ISO and this time, I will guard it by my
> life and write on the folder the date and rename the file and create a
> read me text file so in case, something super natural will happen
> again, I will be ready for it :D

I don't think it is the supernatural we are protecting against here :)

As a further quick check of "which daily build is this ISO file?",
attached is a very small script isodate.sh that tells you the date of
the MD5SUM.TXT file that is within every Ubuntu ISO.

It's just a one-liner dressed up as a script, really :)  If you put it
somewhere on your $PATH you can then run it as

  isodate.sh saucy-desktop-i386.iso

and it outputs the date of that image, for example

Jun 17 2013

The isoinfo command it uses is part of the genisoimage package, in case
you do not have that installed.

This little script should help in case you are ever in any doubt as to
whether an ISO image file is today's image or an earlier one.

You can also use commands to download new ISOs with zsync to a new
filename that includes todays date, but still uses yesterday's file so
you do not need to download unchanged parts of the ISO.

For example, assuming you want to keep a set of ISOs starting with the
file lubuntu-saucy-desktop-i386-20130617.iso , you can do:

  zsync -i lubuntu-saucy-desktop-i386-$(date -d yesterday +%Y%m%d).iso \
  -o lubuntu-saucy-desktop-i386-$(date +%Y%m%d).iso \
  http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/lubuntu/daily-live/current/saucy-desktop-i386.iso.zsync

This will get you a new file lubuntu-saucy-desktop- i386.20130618.iso .
And tomorrow, that exact same command will get one with tomorrows date.
Simple, and automatic :)  I thought the IRC session on using zsync would
teach this sort of basic procedure, but maybe it doesn't? Shouldn't it
do so?  It's straightforward shell usage.

Obviously, you can combine this with a trivial cron job that deletes
daily ISOs older than a certain date, maybe a week or two, depending on
how much disk space you have for ISOs.  Do this together with the zsync
command in a cron job, and your machine will automatically keep a
collection of the last 7 (or last 14, or whatever) daily ISOs for you.

Our computers are really good at doing boring repetitive tasks like this
correctly, the same way every time.  So let your PC do this for you!
Save your time and effort for the things that need a human... like
testing these images :)

Jonathan
-- 
  Jonathan Marsden
  jmarsden@xxxxxxxxxxx

Attachment: isodate.sh
Description: application/shellscript