This site went down yesterday...

[Frankenpod]

For a while yesterday this site stopped working for whatever reason.  The (first-world) problem was it meant I couldn't install RB on an ipod 6g with RB utility, becuase it needed to download the bootloader from here.
I had a recent dev version of RB itself, but not the bootloader.
Is there a way to avoid this problem in future?  i.e. have a local copy of the bootloader as well as RB itself?  If I pick 'manual install' from the 'release' menu, it doesn't seem to include the bootloader.

[amachronic]

All the bootloaders are at https://download.rockbox.org/bootloader. They don't change often so you could download the ones you need manually, but I don't know if the RB utility can be told to use a local file.

[Frankenpod]

Thanks.   In the past I've noticed RBUtility sometimes choses to use a 'previously cached version' rather than download it again, but not sure where those get cached (some obscure windows directory?).  If it can do that, presumably there must be a way of persuading it to use a locally-stored version of the bootloader?

[amachronic]

Copying the bootloader to the cache should work but I think the cache is a temporary folder, so it might get deleted sometimes. On Windows the cache folder will likely be somewhere under AppData.

[bluebrother]

Copying the bootloader to the cache should work but I think the cache is a temporary folder, so it might get deleted sometimes. On Windows the cache folder will likely be somewhere under AppData.

In the settings dialog you can configure the cache folder. The default is the default path for temporary files depending on the OS. However, it uses Qt's caching mechanism so simply copying the file over won't do the trick.

Is there a way to avoid this problem in future?  i.e. have a local copy of the bootloader as well as RB itself?  If I pick 'manual install' from the 'release' menu, it doesn't seem to include the bootloader.

Rockbox Utility is intended to install online only (we had an offline mode in the past, but that was rather buggy so eventually removed.) If you want to be able to install in case the website is down you can always install manually. The manual has the download links. Installing offline with Rockbox Utility is something that's not really doable right now.

[Frankenpod]

Is it actually possible to install the bootloader manually, though?  The manual says:

Bootloader installation from Windows

Manual installation under Windows is not supported. Please use Rockbox Utility for bootloader and Rockbox installation.

Just bothered that if this site eventually goes down for good, or just, as has happened in the past, becomes inaccessible for a prolonged period, it will no longer be possible to install or re-install RB.
(and I'm endlessly faffing about with, and upgrading ipods, so frequently have to reinstall it)