Need a Complete COPY of all Pandora-related Apps & Software

[Greling]

We need a torrent or something. I don't see it anywhere. I think it would be a great idea. It would take a lot of tax off of OpenPandora's servers and allow for a wider reach of the software. We could date and timestamp the torrent so that way people know how up-to-date the software is. And, the makers of Pandora could sell hardcopies of this software on DVD and/or SD card for a modest but fair fee and use the proceeds to promote the project and generate revenue to assist in the production of more handhelds. In exchange, people like me would be saved from hours of browsing and downloading and would have a full library that would could explore at our own leisure. It would add some degree of immortality to the project and would also serve as support insurance should the original makers of the pandora decide to end or abandon the project. Thoughts?

 

[gruso]

There is a thread here for people wanting to download the whole lot for themselves: http://boards.openpa...-the-whole-repo


I realise that doesn't completely address your question. Personally I think this community is too small to keep large torrents seeded, although we may have more success with a private Pandora torrent site (who else remembers the glory days of GP2X Torrents?). Me, I'd rather use the above linked method to grab everything rather than fish through various repo snapshots on torrent sites.


However, as the community grows, the load will increase on ED's servers, we'll get more potential seeders, and the torrent idea might become more and more practical. Then you're left with the question of whether or not devs want their work distributed this way.

 

[lunixbochs]

I'd be willing to host one or two usa-based repo/apps mirrors if load/bandwidth is a problem there.


mirrors would also offer a nice redundancy if the main site(s) went down permanently for any reason.

 

[DaMummy]

we already did this once, had a 512mb or so worth of basic and popular apps that one could fit on a 512mb sd card. the return on it was not that great, maybe 7 people in all actually downloaded the torrent, and the plan to update the torrent to include 1gb worth of data to serv a whole 1gb sd card, never took place because of little interest. but the speed wasnt an issue as the original torrent author and me kept it seeding at 100kb/s each most of the time.


get some mre interest in this, and it could be done again, it really isnt that much of a problem to put together, and i could easily also upload a package to usenet as well. but as said, theres just little to no interest in this

 

[dementio]

I'd be willing to keep it seeding on my server, 5Mb/s up

 

[ibisum]

I'd give anything for someone smart to build me a few SD-cards worth of wonderful Pandora stuff, all set up and configured and ready to go .. if anyones interested in such a project, PM me and we'll work something out...

 

[gruso]

^ This is where GP2X Torrents rocked. Maybe we should look at doing something similar. It would need to be handled properly (ie. not a piracy free-for-all), and would ideally have no association with the forums or anything on ED's server.


If people are interested, we could set up a subreddit or something where discussion can continue.

 

[EvilDragon]

I'd be willing to host one or two usa-based repo/apps mirrors if load/bandwidth is a problem there.


mirrors would also offer a nice redundancy if the main site(s) went down permanently for any reason.

Sounds like a good idea


Do you know how to properly setup a mirror with databases, etc.?


I've never done something like that :/


About torrents:


A torrent with freely available PNDs might be a good idea.


I've never done much with torrents, but I know you can put multiple files into one torrent. Can you update a torrent with new files and everyone who is connected will get the new files automatically?

 

[DaMummy]

set something up, and ill gladly support it with my bandwidth, and upload it to usenet as well. but like i said, last time this was done, it wasnt a project worth bragging about

Can you update a torrent with new files and everyone who is connected will get the new files automatically?

no, each time a pnd would have to be updated, it would have to be a whole nother torrent, but with some kung-fu, the downloader could easily just transfer he files he previously downloaded, have the new torrent client recheck the files if theyre the same as new torrent, and not have to redownload them

 

[EvilDragon]

Hmm, so the torrent idea isn't that practical if you manually need to update it every time.


Is there something similar we could use?


Hm, with the repo api, someone could even code a GUI that locally mirrors and updates the repo, always getting the latest program versions.

 

[DaMummy]

on the other hand, once you actually have all the pnds, future panorama included in os can easily check which updates you need

 

[gruso]

Yep, or PNDstore can do that now.


Still, I think full repo downloads are best handled as one-offs, using the advice in that thread I linked. If we were setting up torrents, it would be more suited to pre-configured SD card images etc.

 

[gadgetoid]

Panorama with its MilkyHelper UI has been adequately keeping all my downloaded PNDs updated, apart from some larger ones which are a chore to download to the Pandora.


It might be better focussing efforts on a desktop version of the Pandora file manager. IE: One you can run on your Linux/Windows/OSX PC, point at an SD card and update/install new apps independent of the Pandora's somewhat ropey internet.


A "Download All" or "Download Entire Category" button would be a logical extension of that, and as configuration files are completely separate from PNDs we could separately wrap up and version a bunch of basic configuration settings for popular apps... not that I've found anything really needs configuring. I think what we're talking about here is the little things that we can't supply; game data files and BIOS files.


I'd love to see a desktop MilkyHelper... in fact it already exists on the desktop as that's where it's demoed in videos. The question; is it releasable in that state, and can it be pointed at and manage an SD card?

 

[Cloudef]

Panorama with its MilkyHelper UI has been adequately keeping all my downloaded PNDs updated, apart from some larger ones which are a chore to download to the Pandora.


It might be better focussing efforts on a desktop version of the Pandora file manager. IE: One you can run on your Linux/Windows/OSX PC, point at an SD card and update/install new apps independent of the Pandora's somewhat ropey internet.


A "Download All" or "Download Entire Category" button would be a logical extension of that, and as configuration files are completely separate from PNDs we could separately wrap up and version a bunch of basic configuration settings for popular apps... not that I've found anything really needs configuring. I think what we're talking about here is the little things that we can't supply; game data files and BIOS files.


I'd love to see a desktop MilkyHelper... in fact it already exists on the desktop as that's where it's demoed in videos. The question; is it releasable in that state, and can it be pointed at and manage an SD card?

Milkyhelper and Panorama both work and build quite easily(dunno about cmake panorama) under linux desktop.


Milkyhelper can treat any absolute path as "Pandora SD" with the -r option. By default it asks you to select default media from mounted medias.


Download all thing is not that important thing in Milkyhelper at least, as it can easily be done with one line of shell, however category download and more advanced searching and other stuff is something I have in my mind. On Panorama maybe option to add all into queue or so could be nice


Not providing binaries atm, but I have plans to rewrite the library (libmilky) sooner or later as It's now quite stable and I can go with complete cleanup to the code from scratch while keeping all the good design decisions of old code, and getting rid of all the bad design decisions.


This means the rewrite will have support for different backends, which means it can work in the end completely without libpnd, which means that it can work on Windows/Mac. However on Pandora it will be compiled with libpnd backend to lower ram usage.


B-Zar already had nice new Panorama UI using libmilky, but seems to have issues with cmake build system(which is annoying for anything) currently, and seems to be busy with life so I'm taking things slow here, as his feedback and use of the library has been quite valuable here, and definitively will help on rewrite.

 

[EvilDragon]

Nice. Some Debian / OpenSuSE / AUR / packages for milkyhelper would be great for easy access for every Linux user in the future

 

[DaMummy]

Cloudef, you should really get a pandora. they are really nice pieces of equipment.

 

[Cloudef]

Nice. Some Debian / OpenSuSE / AUR / packages for milkyhelper would be great for easy access for every Linux user in the future

That's a good idea, I might do a AUR package somewhere in near future.


If someone wants to build it for themselves, just grab the libpnd for pandora-libraries git first and then milkyhelper && libmilky should just compile, given you have the following dependencies. Depending on your system, you probably already have them all expect for maybe jansson, which is used to parse json.


The dependencies are such from makefile (or you could compile with g++ to get rid of stdc++ which is needed by libpnd):


-lcurl -lssl -ljansson -lstdc++ -lpnd


https://github.com/Cloudef/milkyhelper


http://git.openpandora.org/cgi-bin/gitweb.cgi?p=pandora-libraries.git;a=summary


It should work just like the Pandora counterpart then..

 

[milkshake]

I'm pretty sure he has one preordered.

 

[WizardStan]

Can you update a torrent with new files and everyone who is connected will get the new files automatically?

no, each time a pnd would have to be updated, it would have to be a whole nother torrent, but with some kung-fu, the downloader could easily just transfer he files he previously downloaded, have the new torrent client recheck the files if theyre the same as new torrent, and not have to redownload them

No kung-fu required, just start the new .torrent exactly the same way you start any torrent. Provided of course that the files are saved to the same directory which can either be done manually because that's how you roll or left automatic because it has the same name. Any good torrent program should automatically do crc checks against existing files for differences and only download the blocks that have changed.

 

[Prometheus]

It might be better focussing efforts on a desktop version of the Pandora file manager. IE: One you can run on your Linux/Windows/OSX PC, point at an SD card and update/install new apps independent of the Pandora's somewhat ropey internet.

Whilst I have no problems with my Pandora's WiFi, I would like to second this idea. It just sounds more convenient, to my mind, because my main box always has internet access, and I could just leave it updating the card in the background while I get things done.