rd-api 1.7.0.0

Installation

To install this package:

For Debian/Ubuntu,

$ sudo apt install -y redis-server pipx   # redis is used to cache block sha1sum
$ pipx install rd-api

For RHEL,

$ sudo dnf install redis python3-pip
$ sudo systemctl start redis
$ pip install --user rd-api

To run rd-api

$ rd-api --help
$ ~/.local/bin/rd-api --help     # if ~/.local/bin/ is not in PATH

Baisc Usage

server side:

$ ls
bigfile1 bigfile2
$ rd-api --host 0.0.0.0 --port 8082

client side (requires rd client):

$ rd http://server-ip:8082/bigfile1

Documentation

Reliable download is implemented this way:

• User uses rd client to request a resource to download.

• rd client requests resource block metadata via the /rd/ api. Block metadata contains block count, block id, block byte offset, block content sha1sum.

• rd-api calculates and serves block metadata to rd client incrementally. Block metadata is cached in redis after calculation.

• rd client fetches block using HTTP/1.1 Range header and verifies sha1sum incrementally. When all blocks are downloaded and verified, combine blocks to get the final resource.

• rd client will retry on http errors and sha1sum verification failures.

• rd client supports continuing a partial download. You can press Ctrl-C to stop download anytime, and continue later by running the same command again.

Reliable download is written in Haskell, binary is distributed on PyPI for easy installation on linux system. Reliable download only runs in linux.

License

Reliable download is released under GPLv3+. Source code can be found at https://gitlab.emacsos.com/sylecn/reliable-download

ChangeLog

• v1.7.0.0 2026-06-02

  • feature: add –block-size option. Now you can set a larger block size when you have good bandwidth with unstable network. Default block size is 2M which is a good balance.

• v1.6.0.0 2024-04-26

  • feature: auto detect file content changes for small files. auto invalidate metadata cache if file has changed.

  • feature: refine fileWorker logs

• v1.5.0.0 2024-04-08

  • bugfix: properly handle unicode string in URL path

  • bugfix: use local time in log messages instead of UTC time

  • bugfix: fix -d –web-root option. this option was not working before.

• v1.4.0.0 2023-10-18

  • feature: rd-api listen host defaults to ::, so it works on both ipv4 and ipv6.

• v1.1.3.0 2022-03-14

  • bugfix: revised logging messages. rd-api supports –verbose option. debug msg is not shown by default.

  • feature: code ported to ghc 8.10.7

• v1.1.0.0 2018-05-10

  • feature: support passing arguments using env variables, for cli arg –redis-host, the env variable will be REDIS_HOST.

  • bugfix: fix cli argument parsing for string types

• v1.0.0.3 2018-05-09

  • update installation doc, rd-api requires redis server

• v1.0.0.2 2018-05-09

  • init release.