[Elecraft] [K3] Minor irritation with K3 Firmware Loader, Version 1.0.11.21

[David Woolley]

Toby Deinhardt wrote:
> 
> While one does not need to use the Elecraft application to download from 
> Elecraft, any FTP client will do, it is a little bit "easier" to do this 
> with the K3 downloader, because it automatically knows what is new since 
> the the last download.

If detecting updated files is the only issue, and assuming that Elecraft 
don't upset the modification dates of unmodified files, you should use 
the open source "wget" tool to do the downloads.  This can be run in a 
mode where it only transfers files which have changed modifications 
dates or changed sizes.  wget has an ftp mode, in which it will traverse 
the directory hierarchy, subject to configurable restrictions, and an 
http mode, in which it will traverse the link structure, again subject 
to configurable restrictions.

Better still, although the firmware files may not be big enough for full 
benefit, would be to use "rsync", but that requires Elecraft to run an 
rsync server.

Incidentally, if the Elecraft downloader is giving false indications of 
files being modified, I wonder if it is trying to compare local time of 
last download against the ftp time stamp, which is most often the local 
time at the server, although a server might be set to use UTC.
-- 
David Woolley
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