what is an iso.part?

I have been trying to download some FreeBSD 5.4 iso images to my comptuer, but for osme reason they are broken into 2 iso.part images. When I download a small file it does it too, breaking it into a * file and *.part file. Can anybody tell me why?

the download monitor thing that I have for firefox displays the fact that I am downloading 1 file, while in reality I have 2 files being created, an iso and iso.part. Hope that might help.

If one of the parts is really huge and the other part is really really small, then the small part is a md5 calculated number or some other calculated number like sfv or pgp, so you can compare the correctness of your downloaded version.
Otherwise, go here:

http://www.moztips.com/bbbook/index....ve+.part+Files

As far as i know one of them is the actuall file and the other one is like a temp file for the file being downloaded. not sure what the purpose is....

I beleive that ©opy®ight is correct. When I'm downloading, I notice a temporary file being saved in the same directory. When the download is complete... the temporary file is removed leaving the file you intended to download.

If you want to look into a better way to download large distributions... look into downloading with torrents. If you are unfamiliar with torrents, please read up on them. They are great! You can get faster download speeds while giving back to the community. You save a lot of bandwidth for the hosters... since you more than likely pay a flat rate for your bandwidth... and web hosts pay per meg/gig... it saves a lot of money all around.

http://www.bittorrent.com/introduction.html

Here is a list of torrents for FreeBSD. There are quite a few seeds/peers in the swarm... your speeds should get pretty high. When I download from a large swarm... I normally get speeds from 80Kbps to 150Kbps. I normally cap my upload at 10Kbps. Lately I've been using the azuraus client with the autospeed plugin. It constanly traceroutes/pings various websites and changes your upload so that your transfer isn't affecting anyone else on your network.

http://www.solidz.com/torrents/bsd/freebsd/

http://azureus.sourceforge.net/
http://azureus.sourceforge.net/plugin_list.php

Just a couple of weeks ago... I downloaded the SuSE 9.3 Distro which was about 3.3 gigs total in about 4 hours or so. If your connection gets disrupted... it'll pick up where it left off. It checks the hash to make sure that the file is correct and you don't get a corrupt image. I'm still acting as a seed for that torrent with my upload for that averaging about 8Kbps. Last I checked... I had distribued 2 full copies (6.6gigs) and I'm still going.

Please remember... bittorrent only works if you are willing to keep seeding after you've downloaded. With the right client and plugins... you'll never notice any change in your network speeds because the clients can automatically change your uploads to give you best overall performance. When I'm gaming... I'll pause the seeds. I don't want any lag...

Basically, if your seeing a '.iso' and a '.iso.part' then it means you did not complete the download. Download it again and this time, after you select the download folder and click 'Save', got to 'tools' (in Firefox) and click 'Downloads'. This will show you your current Downloads and tell you when they are complete. When they are you will have just the '.iso' file in your save folder and it will be complete and of the correct size.