[arch-general] Making pacman check multiple repos

[Ng Oon-Ee]

On Sat, 2009-12-12 at 02:13 +0100, Heiko Baums wrote:
> Am Sat, 12 Dec 2009 08:58:17 +0800
> schrieb Ng Oon-Ee <ngoonee at gmail.com>:
> 
> > Because sometimes all the mirrors listed in mirrorlist will not have
> > the file, if its just been uploaded. Also not everyone stays
> > up-to-the-minute with updates, judging by the "updated after a month"
> > posts we see once in a while.
> > 
> > I'm concerned about the last bit, if a package was just uploaded and
> > only exists on one mirror, everyone who updates and has that package
> > in the period between its uploading and its appearance on their local
> > mirrors will 'fall-back' on varying mirrors (lengthening the update
> > process) and all end up on the poor main server (or Tier 1/2 mirrors).
> > Bad for both the mirror bandwidth as well as most probably much slower
> > for the user, who could probably just wait a day or so for the update
> > to come to his (faster, presumably) local mirror.
> 
> 
> Wouldn't it be possible to first upload the packages and update the db
> files when the packages on the mirrors (at least on several mirrors)
> are updated?
> 
> If I have such a "problem" that a package is on no mirrors, which
> doesn't happen often, I usually abort the system update and wait one
> day. I think that's the normal and easiest way of solving this issue.
> 
> Greetings,
> Heiko

The few mirrors which sync first would have quite much higher bandwidth
usage =).

The concern then is that in the period of time between uploading of
packages and updating of db, the db would point to a package (foo-1.3)
while the mirror would only have the new version (foo-1.4), since I
don't think many mirrors keep multiple copies of the same package
(schlunix I know off, any others?). So that would break updating as
well, just in a different direction, and this would not be recoverable
from.