Last night, I needed to install another package, and didn't have my CD set handy. I thought "No problem, it's on the FTP server now...". I went to the 'Change source of installation' Yast2 module, selected 'network', and entered the ftp server and path. No Go - it wouldn't connect. A search of the reference manual and the help-system led me to believe that a 'network install' is now assumed to be NFS, but there is a comment that samba and FTP are alternatives. Well, there is a radio button for SMB, but none for FTP... I seem to recall that under yast(1), it was the SMB option that was 'hidden', and you had to enter the hostname along with a 'secret code' or prefix to get it to talk SMB. Is yast2 deprecating the FTP option, and hiding it in a similar manner? If so, can someone tell me the secret incantation? I can understand that the managers of the SuSE FTP site might want to limit traffic by 'hiding' the FTP option, but I think this is counter-productive. I've seen several posts lately where people report mirroring the entire FTP site to their hard disk in order to do a local install. I don't know about others, but I've never installed more than 800-900 RPMs on a single machine, never even close to the 2000+ that are on the FTP site. So why would someone want to make it difficult to do an FTP install, which would be selective, when the alternative seems to be much more resource consumptive? Both NFS and SMB protocols are better suited to LAN use than over the 'open internet', so why would anyone want to hide the best option for installing directly over the internet? On a related note, does anyone know of an FTP cacheing proxy package? I'd like to set up a 'virtual mirror' site. Is it possible with any available packages to set up an FTP server, with no real files behind it? Only a configuration file which would map a virtual mount point in the filesystem to a remote FTP server, and would fetch the files into its own local filesystem only with the first request from a client user... There are so many .rpms in the full distribution which are probably never installed (non-local language documentation, etc), that it seems a waste of bandwidth to mirror them and then never serve them to users. I imagine a further enhancement would be to actually use rsync between the mirror and the 'master' FTP site, so that when a package is updated, only the delta needs to be transferred, and then only when a user first requests it. Is this just a pipe dream? Or does such a 'mirror-on-demand-only' system already exist? -- Rick Green "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety." -Benjamin Franklin