Ubuntu Hardy Heron is almost out!

The release candidate is available! Keeping with its trend to stay on the edge, the release candidate comes with Firefox 3 beta 5 (the last beta version had Beta 4)! Four days to go for the final release, and we at NITT are already getting ready to download the repositories for local usage (we don’t have an internet connection though we have a lan in many places). I am sure there must be lots of Indian colleges out there who would be doing similar things because of the lack of a high bandwidth internet connection.
I am posting the script to automatically start the download of Ubuntu Hardy Heron when the release is available on 24 April 0530 hours IST:
function download {
    echo "Starting the download of Gutsy Gibbon Repos"
    debmirror ~/ubuntu/hardy-i386 --host=in.archive.ubuntu.com --root=ubuntu/ --nosource -m --passive --method=http --progress --ignore-release-gpg --section=main,universe,multiverse,restricted --arch=i386 --dist=hardy -proxy=http://10.0.0.111:3128 &
}

while [ 1 -eq 1 ]
do
    if [ 1208995200 -le `date +%s | bc` ]
    #1208995200 is the time stamp for the release date in my time zone (IST)
    then
        download
        break
    else
        echo sleeping
        sleep 1000
    fi
done

This is a bash shell script. Run it using the command “bash ./downloadScript.sh”, where “downloadScript.sh” is the name of the file containing the above code.

You can put this line in your /etc/rc.local to make it run every time the computer starts. The download will always commence from where it was left off the last time!
Here is a neat preview video of the beta release: