As per FS#6708, here is a patch against makepkg to download the first 50kb of the db.tar.gz file. Feel free to tweak the number, I thought it was a good balance between getting an accurate number and making dialup users wait. --- /usr/bin/rankmirrors 2007-03-25 20:07:04.000000000 -0600 +++ rankmirrors 2007-03-26 22:39:23.000000000 -0600 @@ -55,7 +55,8 @@ def talkToServer(serverUrl): opener = urllib2.build_opener() - tmp = opener.open(serverUrl).read() + # retrieve first 50,000 bytes only + tmp = opener.open(serverUrl).read(50000) def getFuncToTime(serverUrl): return lambda : talkToServer(serverUrl) @@ -139,8 +140,18 @@ elif options.times: print ' * ', sys.stdout.flush() + + # add db.tar.gz to server name + try: + splitted2 = serverUrl.split('/') + dbFileName = splitted2[len(splitted2) - 3] + '.db.tar.gz' + if serverUrl[-1] != '/': + dbFileName = '/' + dbFileName + except: + dbFileName = '' + try: - serverToTime[serverUrl] = timeCmd(getFuncToTime(serverUrl)) + serverToTime[serverUrl] = timeCmd(getFuncToTime(serverUrl + dbFileName)) if options.verbose: try: print "%.2f" % serverToTime[serverUrl]