How to use jigdo to download media images

I worked with the CD release team over the weekend for the final release of Debian Stretch. One problem: we have media images which we cannot test because the team does not have the hardware. I asked questions on the debian-cd mailing list about the future of these and various other .iso images.

Could we replace some DVDs and larger files with smaller jigdo files so that people can download files to build the DVD locally?

People asked me:

• How do you actually use jigdo to produce a usable media image? 
• What advantages does jigdo bring over just downloading a large .iso image?

Why jigdo?

• Downloading large files on a slow or lossy link is difficult.
• Downloading large (several GB) files via http can be unreliable.
• Jigdo can be quicker than trying to download one large file and failing.
• There are few CD mirrors worldwide: jigdo can use a local Debian mirror.
• The transport mechanism is http - no need for a particular port to be opened.

Using jigdo

Jigdo uses information from a template file to reconstruct an .iso file by downloading Debian packages from a mirror. The image is checksummed and verified at the end of the complete download. if the download is interrupted, you can import the previously downloaded part of the file.

It's a command line application - the GUI never really happened - but it is fairly easy to use.  apt install jigdo-file then find the .jigdo file and .template files that you need for the image from a CD mirror: https://cdimage.debian.org/debian-cd/current/amd64/jigdo-cd/

To build the netinst CD for AMD64, for example: you need the .jigdo file as a minimum: debian-10.4.0-amd64-netinst.jigdo

If you only have this file, jigdo-lite will download the template later but you can save the template in the same directory and save time. The jigdo file is only 25k or so and the template is 4.6M rather than 336M. I copied them into my home directory to build there. The process does not need root permissions.

Run the command jigdo-lite This prompts you for a .jigdo file to use. By default, this uses http to fetch the file from a distant webserver.

(If the files are local, you can use the file:/// syntax.For example: file:///home/amacater/debian-10.4.0-amd64-netinst.jigdo)

jigdo-lite then reads the .jigdo file and outputs some information about the .iso

It offers the chance to reload any failed download, then prompts for a mirror name. The download pulls in small numbers of files at a time, saves to a temporary directory and will checksum the eventual .iso file.

This will work for any larger file including the 16GB .iso distributed only as a .jigdo

For i386 and AMD, the images are bootable when copied to a USB stick. Use dd to write them and verify the copy.

• Plug in a USB that can be overwritten.
  
• Use dmesg as root to work out which device this is.
  
• Change to the directory in which you have your .iso image.
  
• Write the image to the stick in 4M blocks and display progress with the syntax of the command below (all one line if wrapped).

dd if=debian-10.4.0-amd64-netinst.iso of=/dev/sdX obs=4M oflag=sync status=progress