Re: [Security-Discuss] 10.1 x86_64 update mirrors are out of sync

On Tuesday 12 July 2005 18:06, Vincent Danen wrote:
> On 12-Jul-05, at 10:02 AM, Michael Riss wrote:
> >>> Hello everyone
> >>>
> >>> Could someone check the master mirror please?
> >>> I even tried to sync from the Mandriva corporate rsync server,
> >>> but the updates packages are also missing there.
> >
> > It works now. Thanks.
> >
> > As mentioned on the main list, glitches in the Mandriva mirror system
> > happen quite often. Is it possible to improve something here?
>
> Sorry, my mail client was being stupid and cut off my single line
> response when I changed my from address.
>
> What exactly was the problem?  Which packages were missing?

After reading the security-announce mails I tried to do an update this 
morning, but "urpmi --auto-select" came up with no packages.
So I checked the date of the hdlist.cz file, it was dated as 07.07.2005
and the cpio-RPM had not the recent version - a typical sync problem.
I resynced from your corporate rsync server, but nothing changed.
I looked at ftp.proxad.net - still the old packages.

> Honestly, as much as I'd love to improve the mirror system (or get
> away with it altogether) there isn't much we can do as we're relying
> on the goodwill of volunteers and companies to mirror things.  Some
> mirror hourly, some mirror daily.  Then you get mirrors mirroring
> from other mirrors and you end up with a nice cascade effect.
>
> My preferred solution would be to scrap the mirrors and setup our own
> self-controlled mirrors at strategic geographic locations, but I
> don't think that will happen anytime soon.  To some people, the
> current mirror thing is good enough.  I'm not one who shares that
> sentiment for the most part.
>
> But I'd like to still know what was missing etc.

You are right about the external mirrors, you can't do anything about them.
But we also have access to the Mandriva corporate rsync server.
We should not be affected from these problems - but we are.
In most cases the corporate server is also out of sync, so the glitch has
to happen somewhere inside Mandriva (according to the main list,
it was a hard disk running full this time).

Don't get me wrong, accidents can happen from time to time. 
But if you look through the archives of this list, you will find several
postings from me about mirror problems, outdated hdlist.cz files or 
wrong public keys on the packages.
I guess for every 10 security updates there is one of these problems.

Maybe this update mechanism has some hidden depths I do not see,
but for me it looks like it's a matter of digging through all the steps 
necessary to ship an update package and then to write scripts
which do the signing of the package, updating of the hdlists and 
sending of the packages and hdlists to the master mirror.

Am I wrong?

cu
Michi

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