apt-get curiosity

[Mark Phillips <mark@ist.flinders.edu.au>]

I'm using apt-get, which seems to be downloading stuff quite nicely,
but there is one thing which I am curious about.

On the right side of the downloading status line, it says:

    7h2m21s

which presumably is the amount of time till it finishes downloading.
It is happily counting down the seconds from this time, till a while
later when it gives the new estimate:

    7h37m46s

This new estimate happily counts down the seconds for a while, then it
switches back to the old estimate.  It seems to oscillate between
these two estimates.

Now I have two guesses about why this is:

1. One is a lower estimate, the other an upper estimate, and the
display deliberately oscillates between the two.

2. This behaviour is a strange quirk of the method used to estimate
time till completion.

Which one is it?  Or is there a third explanation?

Cheers,

Mark.



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