Re: Some thoughts about yum and repositories
On Thursday 28 October 2004 15:49, William Hooper wrote:
D. D. Brierton said:
> On Thu, 2004-10-28 at 19:29, William Hooper wrote:
>> D. D. Brierton said:
>> [snip]
>>
>>> 1. Yum repositories should have a mirrors.xml file. All the user
>>> need do is sign up to the main repository itself, the
>>> mirrors.xml file is downloaded, and yum tries to use the mirror
>>> that is closest or fastest (I'm not sure *how* it should do
>>> that, but lets think of this as an ideal scenario proposal).
>>
>> The version of yum in rawhide already has this. IIRC it does it
>> using the same format as up2date, point it to a text file of
>> repos and it randomly picks one.
>
> Excellent. So all I do is add rpm.livna.org to yum.conf and yum
> automagically takes care of the rest?
Umm, no. "point it to a text file of repos and it randomly picks
one", just like up2date. For example:
http://fedora.redhat.com/download/up2date-mirrors/updates-released-f
c2 [snip]
>>> 6. There should be some way of distinguishing
>>> between a repository that is part of Fedora Core, or Fedora
>>> Extras or Fedora
>>> Alternatives.
>>
>> [snip]
>>
>>
>> Of course it would be nice to decide what those terms mean and to
>> what repos they apply first.
>
> I thought that was fairly clear:
The concept if fairly clear, but I have yet to see any repo labeled
any of those in the real world, or any guidelines from the Fedora
on how to advertise yourself as such.
--
William Hooper
You've hit a very large part of the problem square on the head there
William. Because there are mirrors here and there, it seems that a
truely inclusive mirror list, including the actual location of the
machine one might be accessing so one can actually make an
intelligent choice as to where to point yum at, is a very elusive,
almost a state secret, thing to find. Ask on the list here, and get
pointed at the downloads.fedora.redhat machine, a machine thats never
served a package up via yum or up2date in chunks bigger than 10k per
fitfull 1 or 2 minute intervals. Watching paint dry is more
entertaining.
The way it is, one tends to hunt around thru what may be a 30 day old
list you've grabbed out of the FAQ or some similar location, pick a
site thats got your stuff and can feed you at 50k+/second, edit it
into your yum.conf, and the site disappears 4 days later as has been
the occasion twice now for out of the states FC2 compatible sites for
me.
I've got one box stock FC2 machine that hasn't been updated since the
Ooo.i8n package was put up, yum has pulled it probably 25 times now
in 3 different day long invocations without getting a good md5sum on
the 6 or 7 occasions it managed to get the whole file without puking
over a bad header checksum and starting over from byte one. At 3
hours or more per attempt I finally put it into the exclude= line,
and I hope the next time I try, it doesn't die from dependency hell.
I'm getting the impression that this file is scrambled well before it
hits the cat5 cable on the back of the server in Research Triangle
Park, which is where I believe that particular yum.conf is pointed.
I love to find a server in Pittsburg, it would be 600+ miles of copper
and glass closer to me than the fedora boxes.
Yes, finding a good server sure is a huge secret. Fixing that sure
would go a long ways toward making yum a pleasure to use.
--
Cheers, Gene
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
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Copyright 2004 by Maurice Eugene Heskett, all rights reserved.