How to post large files

[Bob Proulx]

Not so much to the coreutils mailing lists but to the other mailing
lists there have been quite a few large files attempted to be posted.
And when I say large I mean 10M files posted to mailing lists with
1200+ subscribers in the worst cases!  Usually somewhat less large.
I wanted to say a few words about posting large files.

I have heard from sysadmin that many days the network runs fully
saturated due only to mailing list traffic.  That causes delays for
everyone for everything.  I know they have made recent improvements
and so that information may be old now.  But regardless the concept
still applies.  Large files pushed by mail are pushed to every
subscriber and has a large multiplier on network bandwidth.

Also many people pay for metered bandwidth.  In the old days that was
phone line charges over a hardline.  Then it seemed like that was no
one used phone lines for data anymore.  But now metered phone data
charges over wireless data plans is once again very often used.
People who pay for metered bandwidth may find it a financial hardship
to participate in the mailing lists if randomly they get hit with
large files.

What to do?  How to deal with these files?

The biggest routine problem is posting large config.log files.  The
simplest answer is to compress them.  Please always ask for them to be
compressed.  I have seen 2.5M config.log files reduced to a few K
bytes when gzip'd and then they are no longer a problem.  (I often
intercept them in the queue, compress them, and send them along.)

The second biggest problem is when people post a desktop screenshot to
show the error message they are seeing.  I once saw a 5M full desktop
screenshow to show a few words of text from a text console upon it!
Obviously they do this out of ignorance and not malice.  Gently
educate them on how to post just the text of the output.

For large text dumps there is the original pastebin site.  Plus many
other free implementations such as http://paste.debian.net/ .  But for
the most part text isn't usually any problem.  I mention this just for
completeness.  Its main use is on IRC.

  http://pastebin.com/

If an image really is the best thing to share then post only the
smallest image that is needed.  If a 20K image is sufficient then
don't send a 12M pixel image.

If a large image really is best then post it to one of the free image
sites and send a URL.  It will be available to those who want it but
not pushed to everyone.  There are many well known photo and image
sites and those are fine.  Continue to use whatever you have been
using.  But many require logins which are a barrier for many people to
quickly post something.  The non-login site I most often see
recommended lately is picpaste.

  http://picpaste.com/

For large binary files neither of the above are suitable.  Pastebin is
for text and picpaste is for images.  The site I most often see
recommended for random binary files is wikisend.  No login needed.

  http://wikisend.com/

Of course it would be best if FSF or GNU provided these services.
Currently I am not aware of anything suitable available at gnu.org.
Hopefully that will change at some point and then we can recommend
those services instead.  If anyone has better alternatives than the
above I would be most interested in hearing about them.

Thank you for listening!

Bob