FYI: Workaround for today's FC5 baseurl/mirrorlist problems

[Scott van Looy]

Today Ralf Corsepius did spake thusly:

> On Wed, 2006-10-25 at 18:40 +0530, Rahul Sundaram wrote:
>> Joshua Andrews wrote:
>>
>>> Thank you Jef.
>>>
>>> I must say that this is a really big piece of shit! Maybe a simple yum
>>> update could have solved this problem for thousands of people!!!!!! Maybe?
>>
>> It wont. Since you wont be able to get that update without the mirror
>> list working.
>
> If yum had a better mirrorlist selection algorithm, this issue would not
> have appeared ;)
>
> And if yum had a counter part to "apt-get update" the network load would
> be less, which would make server overloads and DOS/QOS attacks less
> successful.

How so?
apt lets you choose a single mirror. If that mirror's down then your apt 
isn't going to have any kind of super cow powers any time soon. Not 
without reconfiguring it.

"update" gets a more recent list of available software from a remote 
repository.

"upgrade" uses that list to update your system using the preferred mirror

yum does the same, only it doesn't require the "update" bit, it works out 
according to how old its metadata cache is as to whether or not it should 
grab new stuff, so it does the "upgrade" bit automatically. And it doesn't 
use a preferred mirror and then die if that mirror's not available, it 
switches between mirrors until it finds a working one...

-- 
Scott van Looy - email:me at ethosuk.org.uk | web:www.ethosuk.org.uk
site:www.freakcity.net - the in place for outcasts since 2003
PGP Fingerprint: 7180 5543 C6C4 747B 7E74  802C 7CF9 E526 44D9 D4A7
       -------------------------------------------
       |/// /// /// /// WIDE LOAD /// /// /// ///|
       -------------------------------------------

I'll meet you... on the dark side of the moon...
 		-- Pink Floyd