On Wed, Sep 12, 2018 at 03:17:39PM +1000, Phillip Smith via arch-devops wrote:

1. Ensuring users always receive up-to-date packages (mirrorbrain won't redirect to a mirror if that mirrors version of that package is outdated compared to the authoritative repository).

I can see the appeal since we don't have that now.

2. Automated monitoring of our mirror network to proactively detect stale or broken mirrors. Mirrorlist files (ie, /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist) can be automatically generated based on MirrorBrain's data.

While nice, we already have mirror list generation from monitored data directly in archweb if you check the "Use mirror status" option here: https://www.archlinux.org/mirrorlist/

3. Reduced load on core mirrors, and load-balancing (for example, a 1Gbit mirror can be weighted to receive 10x the traffic of a 100MBps mirror).

We already have `rankmirrors` which selects mirrors based on their performance from a client's point of view (I think download speed and response time). Though, on its own, it won't detect new mirrors if we add them and the users don't update their lists. I don't really know if new mirror are actually getting any use or not right now, so I can't tell if that is an issue or not.

4. Automatic MetaLink and Torrent file generation, with web-seeds (currently handled by hefur on luna?).

I think that's done manually by Pierre when he creates a new ISO. I'm not 100% sure though. I don't know if we really want or need mirrorbrain. It's a great fit for projects with few big files which are downloaded by many people upon a new release. If we were to use mirrorbrain, the pacman mirror list would only contain the redirector URL, correct? 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. Also, right now people can update without having to connect to a central server and I don't like the idea of adding a SPOF for something that already works rather well. Mirrorbrain sounds fine for our ISOs, but I don't know if those get enough downloads (via HTTP) to warrant setting it up. Florian