Re: [Gnu-arch-users] Mirror feature enhancement

[Stephen J. Turnbull]

>>>>> "chth" == chth  <address@hidden> writes:

    chth> 2) mirroring checks if a file '=meta-info/mirror-serial'
    chth> exists, If so then the contents of the remote file are
    chth> compared against the local mirrored
    chth> '=meta-info/mirror-serial'. When these both files differ the
    chth> local mirror will be completely rebuild (rm -rf or backuped
    chth> and fetched again).

This looks pretty fragile to me:

Does the initial check take place locally, remotely, at the mirror, at
the source, or both (ie, if it's missing in one place, then the files
differ)?

This imposes the burden of rebuilding on _all_ mirrors, unless you
provide a flag to switch it off.  Of course if the source archive is
broken, all mirrors need rebuilding, but I would think that some kind
of network outage would often be the cause of mirror breakage, and be
limited to one (a few, if the break is "near" the source archive)
mirror.

Many mirror admins will prefer to schedule the rebuild at their own
convenience (optionally disabling the mirror in the interim), rather
than next update, especially if the archive is large compared to
between-mirror deltas.

Many "personal use" mirrors are updated intermittently, so won't get
fixed without admin intervention.

All-in-all, it seems to me that the case where this would be most
useful is likely to involve professionals (in the sense of "ethics")
at both ends, and there you are likely to get good cooperation with
not so much effort.

-- 
Institute of Policy and Planning Sciences     http://turnbull.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp
University of Tsukuba                    Tennodai 1-1-1 Tsukuba 305-8573 JAPAN
               Ask not how you can "do" free software business;
              ask what your business can "do for" free software.