DistrOS Meta4s News

This is a very new project, and I'm just figuring out how to get the releases done in a manner that can reflect the quality of the data properly. Until I can get my scripts to work correctly (my verification code has a loophole somewhere) I will process them manually. There will be a "release" and an "unverified" directory in the file section. I'll try to fix the unverified soon.

All the meta4s have piece hashes now. That might sound almost religious, but the reality is they are sha-1 sums of 262144 byte chunks.

DistrOS Meta4s are metalink v4 files, which use a file extension of meta4. These files are intended for use with the DistrOS Multiboot System, however they can be used stand alone with a downloader that supports them, such as aria2 (http://aria2.sourceforge.net/) or DownThemAll (http://www.downthemall.net/).

Initially they will be produced using a straight version of the metalink standard, then with some extra data using extended attribute tags. In the future an extended model of the metalink format which provides additional metadata for booting the described images will be constructed and used to create an RFC for a complete bootable image acquisition and bootloader configuration system.

The DistrOS Multiboot System is a suite of projects which are used together to create multiboot installations on usb keys, hard drives, and of virtual machines. The projects which comprise the DistrOS Multiboot suite at this time are:

DistrOS Meta4s, the equivalent of the DistrOS repository. http://meta4s.sf.net

DistrOS /boot/horn, the "portable" version of DistrOS that can be installed and used with most linux distros. This version formerly had ISO images based on TinyCore Linux, but basically installs in /boot/horn and has no specific OS requirement. However, I found TinyCore lacking in some crucial respects and decided it would be easier to build my own ISO than to work with them. The ISO Images currently on this project will be removed soon, as they are basically useless at this point anyway based on changes made for the alpha release coming up. http://boothorn.sf.net... read more