Does mirrorselect always do more harm than good?

soluzar

This is my 4th time or so of installing Gentoo linux, on various boxes, twice from stage one, so I'm starting to get a pretty good feel for the way the install process works. Every time I have done the 'mirrorselect' part of the installation, it has caused problems, and on one occasion inserted random garbage into my make.conf.

The only solution which ever allowed me to progress to the end of the install process was to remove or comment the mirrors line from my make.conf.

I now ask if it is not advisable to remove this troublesome utility from the install handbook altogether. Opinions?
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Soluzar

cyrillic · Posted: Sun Jan 02, 2005 4:50 pm Post subject:

I always add the mirrors I want manually to /etc/make.conf

Just pick a couple that work well for you from this list : Gentoo Linux Mirrors

taurus · Posted: Sun Jan 02, 2005 7:46 pm Post subject:

I've never used that command to add a mirror site to my /etc/make.conf because it trashes my /etc/make.conf every single time!!! I add it in my hand

GENTOO_MIRRORS="http:<whichever the closest to you>"

taurus

cfaun · n00b Joined: 25 Dec 2004 Posts: 63

When I run it, it adds mirrors that don't work...
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forkboy · Posted: Sun Jan 02, 2005 8:34 pm Post subject:

It worked perfectly for me when I used it.

racoontje · Veteran Joined: 19 Jul 2004 Posts: 1290

Worked fine for me too, but I manually selected my servers afterwards and they were faster than the ones mirrorselect thought I needed.

kimchi_sg · Advocate Joined: 26 Nov 2004 Posts: 2969

theprez98 · n00b Joined: 02 Jan 2005 Posts: 6

During the install process, when gentoo 'fetches' the source files from various servers (emerge --fetchonly system) the connections often abort and sometimes timeout (and take a long time to timeout). Is this a mirrorselect problem?

It has often ended up aborting the process. I have had a little bit of luck starting it again, but it ends up stalling on several servers.

How can I fix this process?

Thanks in advance for any help you may be able to provide.

kimchi_sg · Advocate Joined: 26 Nov 2004 Posts: 2969

theprez98 · n00b Joined: 02 Jan 2005 Posts: 6

Thanks for the help. I figured this was the problem, I just wanted some further advice before I started again. I'll try again...

Crucis · n00b Joined: 07 Sep 2004 Posts: 65 Location: Singapore

Try

rkasting · n00b Joined: 12 Jan 2005 Posts: 30

Get rid of it, unless someone wants to make it really work. It almost made me give up on the distro, until I realized that it was all just messed up from mirrorselect.

Now I've gotten the system up and running with no problem.. only I'm going to rebuild from stage1 because I misguidedly gave up on it because of mirrorselect issues.

Do you know how I feel? LOL...

Rudy1066 · n00b Joined: 30 Jan 2004 Posts: 8 Location: Athens, OH

For me, mirrorselect has been a unneeded pain-in-the butt. The last time I tried, it inserted 45,000 lines of garbage into my make.conf. It is much easier to manually select a mirror based on your experience and geographical location.
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beandog · Posted: Wed Jan 12, 2005 11:48 pm Post subject:

Bob P · Posted: Thu Jan 13, 2005 2:33 am Post subject:

Earthwings · Posted: Fri Jan 14, 2005 10:24 am Post subject:

Moved from Installing Gentoo.

cazort · Posted: Wed Jan 26, 2005 8:17 pm Post subject:

OK, now my beef. MIRRORSELECT IS SO SLOW!!! Why? Is there some ridiculous timeout period? From my perspective, if a server hasn't responded in 15 seconds, why does it sit waiting for it?

How can I change the timeout? I ran mirrorselect 5 minutes ago, and it's still only about a third the way through checking the mirrors. Most mirrors respond instantly, but occasionally they trip it up.

Also, I've run into a more serious problem with mirrorselect: often, it'll check a mirror as fast that has a small number of allowed connections. I then try to run emerge at a different time of day, and there's no way in hell I can get onto that ftp site. Often, because the fast sites are the ones that only allow a few users on, I've had it be that mirrorselect picks a handful of such sites, and then when I actually come to start building a system, none of the mirrors it picks work at all, and then it defaults back to some extremely slow mirrors.

Argh. I agree. It's terrible. Why can't we fix these issues?

Bose-Einstein · n00b Joined: 17 Oct 2004 Posts: 43

Yep, anyone know why it just fills make.conf with unreadable characters (every single time)

Shadow Skill · Veteran Joined: 04 Dec 2004 Posts: 1023

Wow I must be really lucky as I do not remember ever having to use Mirrorselect even when installing my system [Perhaps I did use it and I just kinda glazed over it.I get pretty much maximum download speed as well, it is definetly a shame that Mirrorselect has a way of screwing up make.conf though. But why is it even adding mirrors to that particular file, that does not seem to make sense what about the rest of you, does it seem logical at all? I would think you would have a seperate mirrors file and leave make.conf for configuring portage features alone.
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StringCheesian · l33t Joined: 21 Oct 2003 Posts: 887

Whenever a few mirrors are down or don't respond, it fools mirrorselect into thinking they're the fastest ones. It should verify that it actually got the number of bytes it was supposed to download.

Shadow Skill · Veteran Joined: 04 Dec 2004 Posts: 1023

StringCheesian · l33t Joined: 21 Oct 2003 Posts: 887

gentoo_lan · Posted: Mon Apr 04, 2005 7:16 pm Post subject:

tercel · Posted: Mon Jun 13, 2005 10:14 pm Post subject: Mirrorselect rewritten

I just thought that the people on this thread would be intereseted to know, I have rewritten mirrorselect from the ground up. I have fixed all the bugs mentioned here, including the "mirrorselect puts garbage in my make.conf" bug, and the issue with selecting broken mirrors as the fastest. (althought that particular bug was corrected in a previous release before my rewrite). In addition the whole thing is much more cleanly coded, so I should be able to keep on top of bug fixes and feature upgrades realtively easily, and its all a lot faster.

Most noteworthy is the algorithmic improvement I made to the "deep" mode, which downloads a test file off the mirrors. Mirrorselect will no longer waste time trying to download from a mirror after it has already become clear that the mirror in question will not be chosen.

It in package.mask right now, feel free to test it at your own risk. I welcome bug reports, and I'd like to get it stable as soon as possible
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screwloose · Posted: Fri Jun 17, 2005 3:12 pm Post subject:

I tried out your new version of mirrorselect and found it to be perfect. Faster than before, doesn't trash my make.conf, picks good working mirrors. Good job!!

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