6. Frequently Asked Questions

Questions prepended with a date indicate a time sensitive question, in other words, a question that relates to a temporary situation. If you see one of these questions and know that the temporary situation has changed, please contact me and let me know so I can remove the question from the mini-HOWTO.

6.1. How do I make jigdo use my proxy?

Load the file ~/.jigdo-lite (or jigdo-lite-settings.txt for the Microsoft Windows version) into a text editor and find the line that starts with "wgetOpts". The following switches can be added to the line:

      -e ftp_proxy=http://LOCAL-PROXY:PORT/
      -e http_proxy=http://LOCAL-PROXY:PORT/
      --proxy-user=USER
      --proxy-passwd=PASSWORD
      

Of course, substitute the correct values for your proxy server. The last two options are only necessary if your proxy uses password authentication. The switches need to be added to the end of the wgetOpts line before the final ' character. All options must be on one line.

Alternatively, under Linux you can also set up the ftp_proxy and http_proxy environment variables, for example in the file /etc/environment or ~/.bashrc.

6.2. Jigdo-lite fails with an error - have I downloaded all those MBs in vain?

Of course this Should Not Happen(tm), but for various reasons you may end up in a state where a large ".iso.tmp" file has already been generated and jigdo-lite appears to have problems, telling you repeatedly to try restarting the download. There are several possible things to try in this case:

6.3. [10 Feb 2003]: Why is it taking so long for jigdo-file 0.6.9 to enter Debian testing?

Normally, it takes 2 weeks of no bug reports for an upload to unstable to filter into testing. However, the jigdo-file package in Sarge has been stuck at 0.6.8 for longer. The problem is is that glibc in unstable upgraded to a new minor version which turns out to be a bit buggy. The jigdo-file package has been compiled against this new glibc on non-i386 by the autobuilders, so it's stuck in Sid together with glibc. When the new glibc filters into Sarge, jigdo-file 0.6.9 will also.

If you're using Woody or Sarge, you are strongly urged to install jigdo-file 0.6.9 from Sid.

6.4. [11 Aug 2002]: Why aren't the translations of this HOWTO on LDP?

I've been having trouble getting the translations of this HOWTO submitted to the non-English LDP editors.

The German LDP editor, Marco Budde refuses to accept the German translation because it was written in Docbook and not Linuxdoc, even though Docbook is the preferred SGML language for the LDP.

The Portuguese LDP editor, Alfredo Carvalho , has completely ignored my submission of the Portuguese translation.

If you care about having LDP documents in these languages, I urge you to write to these editors and ask them to please be more responsible about accepting translated documents. For the time being, you can download these translations from my personal website, http://www.dirac.org/linux/debian/jigdo.

6.5. jigdo takes a bit long to download the files because wget keeps disconnecting and then reconnecting to the FTP server for each file. Is there a way to make it faster?

The download speed can be increased by using an HTTP instead of an FTP server - FTP is not a very efficient protocol for downloading lots of small files. Additionally, you may want to upgrade to the latest version of wget, because that version supports persistent HTTP connections, which results in another slight speed increase.

Unfortunately, even with persistent HTTP connections, the download speed will not be as high as that of a single-file ISO download. Such speeds can only be achieved with HTTP pipelining - the jigdo GUI application will support pipelining.

6.6. What do I do if my jigdo download gets interrupted?

If your download gets interrupted, all you need to do is restart jigdo-lite and hit <ENTER> at all the question prompts. Jigdo-lite will pick up where it left off.

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?

You may find that the .jigdo file you downloaded is broken. It's very uncommon, but it does happen from time to time with moving targets like Debian testing or unstable.

If you find that your .jigdo file is broken, you'll need to download a new .jigdo file (when a fixed one becomes available), but you won't need to download all the ISO data again.

You can use the same loop mounting trick we use when updating an ISO image. The difference is that there's no finished .iso file to start with, but the .iso.tmp file is an ISO image too and can be used to finish the download without having to re-download all the data that was downloaded before the broken .jigdo file caused jigdo-file to halt. Simply loop mount the .iso.tmp file on /mnt and when you re-run jigdo-lite with the fixed .jigdo file, tell jigdo-lite to scan /mnt. Don't forget to rename or move the .iso.tmp file so it doesn't interfere with jigdo-lite which will want to create a new .iso.tmp file.

6.8. Can I use jigdo to download images for DVD?

Absolutely; the process is identical to downloading CD images. The only thing you need to do differently is to download the .jigdo and .template files for DVDs instead of CDs. You can find the DVD .jigdo and .template files at http://www.debian.org/CD/jigdo-cd/.

Note that you need Linux 2.4 or later to create DVD-sized files. Under Windows, DVD-sized images can't be created at all at the moment because the C++ library of the mingw gcc port doesn't have big file support yet.

6.9. Can I burn the .iso.tmp file to CD?

Thanks to Gordon Huff and David Anselmi, we now know the answer is "yes you can". But more importantly, Gordon gave a good reason why you'd want to do this in the first place. Paraphrasing Gordon:

My friend's Win98 has a *nice* cable connection. I arrive in the morning, start jigdo (more than one, actually) and then we go to the store, tie back the kiwi plant, put up the Christmas lights and Christmas tree, trim the tree, order and split a pizza and fire up the satellite dish.

I leave my friends place with several iso.tmp's on CDRWs. When I get home, I use the iso's that didn't finish to update my jigdo setup at home which is a dial-up.

6.10. Why doesn't jigdo work? It downloads some packages and deletes them. I know it doesn't write them to the iso.tmp file because the file size doesn't change!

Jigdo works just fine - the .iso.tmp file is created at the beginning with its final size, but filled with zero bytes. Later, parts of it are overwritten with the downloaded data.

You can tell that jigdo is making progress by looking at the messages "Found X of the Y files required by the template" that are printed from time to time. The second value "Y" should decrease. When it reaches zero, the download is finished.

6.11. I'm having trouble getting jigdo-easy to work.

See Section 7.1.

6.12. [10 Feb 2003]: I'm having trouble getting jigdo to download Sarge or Sid.

If you're using Potato or Woody: because of a change in jigdo, the version of jigdo-lite that comes with Potato and Woody (r0 and r1) cannot download Sarge and Sid images. The jigdo-file packages from Sarge (0.6.8) and Sid (0.6.9) can download Sarge and Sid images. Also, a bugfixed version of jigdo-file (0.6.5) was submitted for inclusion for Woody r2 and will hopefully be available when r2 comes out. However, because of bug fixes and enhancements, you're urged to use jigdo-file 0.6.9 from Sid.

If you're using Sarge or Sid, then you may need some help. Search the archives of the debian-cd mailing list, and if that doesn't solve your problem, you should send them a request for help (Section 7.4).

6.13. Jigdo-lite is too verbose. How can I supress some or all of its messages?

Jigdo-lite uses wget, and wget's output can be quite verbose. If this is unsettling, you can make wget more quiet by adding --non-verbose to the wgetOpts switch in your ~/.jigdo-lite file. If you want wget to print no messages at all, use --quiet in the wgetOpts switch.

6.14. Can I use jigdo on platforms other than Linux?

Certainly. If you're interested in Potato or Woody under Microsoft Windows, old SunOS, HP-UX and IRIX you can use jigdo-easy. See Section 7.1 and Section 7.4.

If you want to download Potato, Woody, Sarge or Sid under Microsoft Windows, jigdo-lite has been ported to that platform and can be downloaded from the main jigdo site (Section 7.4).