[Date Prev][Date Next] [Thread Prev][Thread Next] [Date Index] [Thread Index]

Re: Cache-Control: max-age sent by apt might delay installation of security updates



On Sun, 2004-02-29 at 09:16, Marc Haber wrote:
> On Sun, 29 Feb 2004 08:55:02 +1100, Robert Collins
> >Thats incorrect. max-age tells squid it MUST revalidate entities with an
> >age >= the max-age value. If squid considers an entity stale it will
> >revalidate it regardless - and your local squid config can tune when
> >this occurs.
> 
> Unfortunately, squid and me share a mutual dislike. How can I tune
> this behavior?
> 
> Practice shows that a squid installed from a Debian package frequently
> doesn't even send out a request to the original server.

What version?
see refresh_pattern for the 'default heuristics'. 
the default pattern (which will match http in the default config) is:
refresh_pattern .               0       20%     4320

thats in minutes - so between 0 and 72 hours. This only applies to
objects without expiry metadata. The 20% is the 'fresh period' and
applies to the objects age.

I.e. if a Packages file is updated a 0:00 on the 24/2/04, then a request
a 0500 on the 25/2/04 will give squid an object with age 0. Requests
until ~ 0600 will be be satisfied with no verification. After that,
verification will occur.

For a packages file that updates daily, the worst case scenario is:
- a squid retrieves it when it was last modified 23:59 hours ago.
- clients making requests to that squid will not be given the new
packages file for (1 day / 5) 4 hours 48 minutes.

If you add max-age=0, then every single request will validate to the
upstream, but will be given 304 results, so the overhead is (relatively)
minimal.

Likewise, if a maximum latency on Packages files is (say) 1 hour, use
max-age=3600

What I suggest is that for security.debian.org, use max-age=0. For other
sites, use max-age=3600.

Perhaps a keyword in sources.list ?
Rob
-- 
GPG key available at: <http://www.robertcollins.net/keys.txt>.

Attachment: signature.asc
Description: This is a digitally signed message part


Reply to: