[Yum] Yum and Bittorrent

[Michael A. Peters]

On 10/21/2004 03:57:38 AM, Konstantin Ryabitsev wrote:

> I still think we're chasing the wrong goose trying to unite yum and  
> bittorrent

Yes - especially since many networks block bt because it costs the  
network money to allow it (the individual user isn't paying for  
bandwidth, well, in most US cases anyway, but the university or other  
ISP certainly is)

Don't be too surprised if blocking bt becomes the norm for home users,  
just like blocking smtp and web servers often is the norm. It's  
becoming expensive for ISP's to allow it due to the popularity of it.

A lot of schools block it largely because it is expensive and most  
frequently used for illegal activity (copyright violation) which they  
don't feel is in the best interests of their trustees or tax payers.

An even bigger issue though is that you never want to run bt as root  
unless you have done a serious audit of the bt code, so yum would need  
to switch users if called by root. It's fairly safe to run yum as root  
now because it makes a connection to a _known_ server - and doesn't  
offer connections to other machines.