up2date problems (use a mirror)

[Tyler larson]

On Wed, 2004-01-14 at 06:07, Jef Spaleta wrote:
> Nicolas Mailhot wrote:
> up2date and yum come preconfigured in a fresh fc1 install
> pointed to redhat urls that redirect you to another redhat url for
> official download server. 

I think that the reason for that was because they originally had the
files located in one place, then moved them. For a while (a few months
back) up2date wouldn't work because the redirects weren't in place. I
think they're there to make things work, not for any specific purpose. 

If they did load balancing on the server side, they'd probably have to
stick to just servers they own. If somebody goes to download.redhat.com,
they expect to be downloading from RedHat's servers. And remember, the
repo location is also a normal website.

I think the best place for mirror selection is on the client side. I
suggest that you select your favorite mirrors from the list in
up2date-config, and downloading just round-robins between them. Headers
would always be downloaded from redhat, along with MD5s of the packages,
and the current mirror list. (Yes, MD5s are necessary unless you want to
make GPG checks mandatory.) The mirror list could be a sort of freshness
report for each mirror--if a mirror's missing packages, it could be
dropped from the list until they appear.

> > 2. There is absolutely no need for the procedure to be interactive,
> > except for rare cases where there is a need for a manual override. Just
> > feed the download manager a list of mirrors and let it handle it,
> 
> There may not be a need for interaction with official fedora core
> mirrors, but since Fedora Core can't official acknowledge other
> repositories like livna due to packages of questionable US legal status
> there will have to be some mechanism for interaction to add extra
> 'mirror files' for 3rd party repos after the install. And lets not
> forget that the client side needs to be able to regrab a mirrorlist
> periodically to get an updated list of mirrors, though whether or not
> thats needs to an interactive step is debatable.
> 
> -jef