On Wed, 12 Sep 2018 at 17:50, Florian Pritz via arch-devops < arch-devops@lists.archlinux.org> wrote:
If we were to use mirrorbrain, the pacman mirror list would only contain the redirector URL, correct?
I wouldn't expect we would replace the content of mirrorlist with the single URL to mirrorbrain; just add it as the top option under "Worldwide", perhaps with a short description of it's purpose. At the very most it could be uncommented as the default option, but I think leaving everything commented so the user can select would still be best.
That would then mean that pacman asks the redirector for each individual package which I think generates way too much unnecessary load compared to our current system.
IME, the load isn't particularly bad since it's primary work is just handing out 301 redirects based on read-only DB queries. I obviously haven't benchmarked, but if I had to estimate then I would say the BBS produces far more load considering it's CRUD DB operations and page generation functions. The DB-writing requirements are non-interactive and can be run as low-priority to minimize impact. According to [0], "handling all downloads of OpenOffice.org, a busy site, could be called *boring*. A simple 512MB box can do this. Handling all openSUSE.org traffic (20-40 millions hits per day) is still relaxed (commodity hardware, server load: zero point something)." [0] http://mirrorbrain.org/