A problem with Indian mirrors and mirrormanager.

[Matt Domsch]

On Thu, May 15, 2008 at 01:36:39AM +0530, susmit shannigrahi wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> As you well know, here at India we are having low bandwidth mirrors.
> To keep up the QoS, we need to restrict our number of connections.
> 
> I myself operate on ftp and usually, the limit is set to 45 concurrent
> connections.
> 
> Now as mirrormanager automatically redirects the clicks at the
> "get-fedora" link,
> the requests from India usually get routed to these two mirrors.
> 
> As they are always operate at their limit, the user eventually gets a
> response "error 421: too many connected users".
> This usually happens over and over.
> 
> So, what can we do to redirect the requests to the next server in the
> queue _if_ we are full?


Yum will do the right thing; the 421 error is considered fatal for
that mirror, and on they go to the next mirror on the list.  For
India, it will return the mirrors on the continent, not just those in
the country, most of the time (until you have more then 3 mirrors).

As for links from get-fedora, those are handled with straight HTTP 301
redirects, to which you are responding with a 421, so yes, the user
sees that 421.  That's a shame.

I don't know how to prevent this, aside from the redirector first
doing a HTTP HEAD to the URL itself, catching the response, and if
200, sending the redirect to the user.  That still doesn't guarantee
that they get a good response though - you could give the redirector a
200, but the user a 421 on their request...


-- 
Matt Domsch
Linux Technology Strategist, Dell Office of the CTO
linux.dell.com & www.dell.com/linux