Re: [gentoo-user] Trying SRC_URI first during fetching

[Volker Armin Hemmann <volkerarmin@googlemail.com>]

On Dienstag 09 Juni 2009, Alan McKinnon wrote:
> On Tuesday 09 June 2009 15:04:54 Stroller wrote:
> > On 9 Jun 2009, at 05:16, Nikos Chantziaras wrote:
> > > Normally, portage will try fetching from GENTOO_MIRRORS during an
> > > emerge and SRC_URI comes last.  I want to reverse this; try SRC_URI
> > > first and if that fails, only then proceed to fetch from
> > > GENTOO_MIRRORS.  Doable?
> >
> > This is undesirable behaviour - te mirrors exist because SRC_URI may
> > often have limited bandwidth.
> >
> > The package's hosting may be donated to the software's author, for
> > instance, by a 3rd party, so when you go directly to SRC_URI, avoiding
> > mirrors, you wear out the author's welcome.
> >
> > Mirrors are hosted by people with gallons & gallons of bandwidth to
> > spare, who expect you to use it.
> >
> > It makes sense to use the mirrors FIRST.
>
> Definitely.
>
> I have to beat users over the head (metaphorically) with a stick to get
> them to use my mirror. They somehow have the idea that SRC_URI has better
> quality bits than my ftp server...
>
> By going to SRC_URI every time, they use up precious international
> bandwidth instead of local (of which there is heaps). Every six months,
> when Fedora or Ubuntu does a release, those users can saturate the entire
> pipe into this *country* - just to get isos that I already have publicly
> available and am begging them to use.

my university has a nice volume cap for all students. But everything 
downloaded from its own network - including the ftp servers is 'free' - only 
outside traffic counts.

Luckily, my university hosts a major gentoo mirror. Not rsync, but distfiles. 
They also have ubuntu, suse, fedora stuff. Windows updates.. and still people 
don't use it. Annoying.