Re: Update download links from ftp to http

[Karl Berry]

Rodney and all,

    ftp.gnu.org is slow

ftp.gnu.org is only one machine, whether it's accessed by http or ftp.
I agree that http is faster for most people these days.  And the FSF
sysadmins have asked that to be the preferred protocol that gets
advertised.

    it is difficult to find a mirror that is
    actually up-to-date.  

http://download.savannah.gnu.org/mirmon/gnu/ shows 71 ok mirrors and 3
bad ones.

    I tried http://ftpmirror.gnu.org/  as per
    http://www.gnu.org/prep/ftp.html  but the mirror was actually
    out-of-date by months.

1) http://ftpmirror.gnu.org/ itself redirects to a "nearby" mirror
chosen more or less at random if there is more than one.
2) It is not supposed to redirect to stale mirrors in any case.
3) What mirror did it send you to?  Whenever I try it, it goes ok.

    documentation links.
    Example:
    
http://www.gnu.org/software/grub/manual/grub.html#Obtaining-and-Building-GRUB
    ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/grub  should just be  http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/grub

I think it is best to mention both http://ftp.gnu.org and
http://ftpmirror.gnu.org, since sending everyone to ftp.gnu.org is
clearly not a good idea, taken overall.  As is done in the standard
boilerplate, which grub doesn't use
(http://www.gnu.org/server/standards/boilerplate-source.html).

As another problem, that documentation page also says "alpha archive
site", even though it is linking to ftp.gnu.org, which is not
alpha.gnu.org.

Best,
karl