[WBEL-users] WBEL Vs Centos ? :-S

[Kirby C. Bohling]

On Mon, Dec 06, 2004 at 09:50:37PM -0500, William Hooper wrote:
> 
> Kirby C. Bohling said:
> > On Mon, Dec 06, 2004 at 07:05:04PM -0500, William Hooper wrote:
> >
> >>
> >> Kirby C. Bohling said:
> >> [snip]
> >>
> >>> I can either wait for them to show up at NCSU (which it appears
> >>> every other single mirror of WBEL mirrors from that, every time it has
> >>>  problems everyone has problems, and they have had problems at least
> >>> 5-6
> >>> times in the 9-10 months I've used WBEL),
> >>
> >> So now magically problems with a mirror John has no control over become
> >>  his problems?
> >
> > Count to 10 slowly.  Go to your happy place.  Go grab a coffee.  Do
> > whatever it is you do to relax.  Then read the rest of this message like I
> > wasn't trying to assign blame or point fingers.  I was merely trying to
> > describe a different perspective to you.
> >
> > You've started your reply by putting words in my mouth.  I never
> > said any of this was John's fault or something I want John to resolve.
> 
> No you specifically said:
> 
> "That's a difference" that is, the updates being released Vs. NCSU, that
> for whatever reason some consider the 'one and only mirror', getting the
> updates "that isn't a difference to an end user."
> 
> I don't hold the Whitebox project (call it whatever definition you decide
> on) responsible for the actions of their mirrors.  That is like saying Red
> Hat is slow when the kernel.org mirror is out of sync (which for a long
> time was all the time).  That's why there is more than one mirror.

Just out of curiousity what mirror do you use?  I checked after 48
hours after John said, "it should be trickling out to all the
mirrors".  Not a single mirror had any of the updates.  That's
happened to me several times.  In all of the cases NCSU was having a
problem.  When NCSU solved their problem, everyone else had the
problem solved too.

When ncsu.edu deleted all of the updates, all but 2 mirrors deleted
all of their updates (the two of them are in my posts to the list).
One that still had updates last time was Belnet.  Belnet didn't have
the new Dec 1/2 updates as of Dec 4th when I checked several times.
In fact, belnet doesn't have them as I write this.  If you read my
previous posts, you'll notice that I have a history of checking all
the mirrors and posting which ones work, and which ones allow rsync
access.  In my experience, if the file has never made it to NCSU, it
isn't there on any of them.  I still religiously check, but I have
yet to see an example of it.

If you go look right now, you'll find that only NCSU and ESAT have
the updates.  Today, 5-6 days after John said the updates had been
put out, of the 9 mirrors, 2 of them have them.  One of them because
I bothered them.  1 of the mirrors is hopelessly out of date, 1 of
them has no DNS entry.  

I'll bet tomorrow or the next day everyone has them, because NCSU
has them.  John's the only one with access to the logs who can tell
us who is actually rsync'ing from whiteboxlinux.org directly.

> 
> > I'd really like you to explain how what any of you quoted implies
> > anything at all that could be construted to mean "problems with a mirror
> > John has no control over become his problems".  Other then
> > the "everyone has problems", I made no mention of John.  In that context,
> > "everyone" meant "everyone who depends on the mirrors",
> > which excludes John and anyone else who uses beau.org directly for updates.
> 
> Everyone has the ability to look at beau.org and see if the updates are
> there.  Especially when John has stated they are there.

Yes, seeing that they are there in no way shape or form implies that
there is a scaleable way to get to them.  I don't pull them from
WBEL directly, and I'd surely never recommend it as a solution on
this list.  I one of the up2date config's pull the header files from
there just so I know when I have updates available that haven't hit
the mirrors yet.

> 
> [snip]
> > I specifically stated in the portion that you cut out, that none of
> > this was John's fault.  However, from the perspective of a _user_, there is
> > no difference between John not releasing the updates for days and
> > instantous mirroring, and John releasing them instantly and the mirrors
> > not having the updates for days.  As a user of WBEL, both are an equally
> > large problem for me.  Either one of them prevents me from having updates.
> 
> And I still say that you should take that up with the mirror (as you did).
>  If you preferred mirror seems to be trying to sync from NCSU, complain at
> them and ask why they aren't looking at the real source.
> 
> > You are both accurate, but you seemed to be attempting to correct
> > him.
> 
> No, I just pointed out that NCSU isn't the main source for updates, so for
> all intents and purposes it doesn't matter if they haven't been updated or
> not.

Really, do you really think it'd be a good idea for everyone to
point at whiteboxlinux.org because it's the primary site?  We tried
that once before, and as I recall John disabled access to /pub
because the mirrors couldn't get the files.  I also disagree that
NCSU isn't the main source for updates.  In my experience, it is the
primary site for scalable access.

> 
> > He was perfectly accurate in what he said,
> 
> Though the "spin" was not.  Read it again.  The mail specifically compares
> that time for updates to get to one mirror (Whitebox) Vs. when the updates
> were "pushed out" (CentOS).

I'll accept that interpretation.  I don't agree, but I'm not
inclined to think I'll change your mind.

> 
> I take no exception with the statement that the last batch of updates took
> some time to get built.  I do however take exception to the insinuation
> that they haven't been released yet.  That is the specific comment I
> replied to.

Fair enough.

> 
> > However, the start of this thread,
> 
> Was flame-bait anyway...

I think it was an honest question, that likely to start a flame war.

> 
> > I'm in no
> > position to arrange that short of just randomly choosing a mirror and
> > asking them to contact John and get an rsync password.
> 
> That would be a good start.  It appears that NCSU has some issues and a
> responsible mirror admin shouldn't be relying on them for updates.

You might really want to check out who is mirroring from whom.
There is pretty ample circumstancial evidence that nearly everyone
is mirroring from NCSU.  Everytime I've had problems getting mirror
access from NCSU, I've had problems from every other mirror.  Yes, I
am anal retentive enough to check them all, every time.  You can
skip OpenSource Mirrors, as they don't have a DNS entry.  There is
another one that doesn't have updates any more recently then May.

	Kirby