Re: Anyone want a utility to find the best mirror?
> Joe Emenaker wrote:
>
> Some time ago, I asked about any utility that could take a list of
> machines
> and find the one that's closest, so that I could find the best mirror
> to
> point dselect to. Someone responded that I should try "netselect",
> which did
> help a lot. However, netselect has a couple of shortcomings:
>
> o It only tests ping times, not actual transfer rates of data
> o It doesn't check to see if there's an ftp server there.
> o It doesn't check to see if the ftp server accepts anonymous login
> o It doesn't check to see if the ftp server even *still* mirrors the
> debian tree
>
> These last two are a real pain... especially the last one. Many of the
> sites
> I tried first in the mirrrors list didn't have the debian tree
> anymore.
> Hrmph!
>
> So, anyway.... I broke down and wrote a little perl script which takes
> a
> README.mirrors.txt and tries to connect to each of the mirrors listed.
> It
> tries to connect anonymously and tries to navagate to the directory
> where
> the debian tree is supposed to be and then it actually tries to
> download a
> file from the site to see what kind of transfer rate it gets.
>
> It does *not* check for *currency* of the mirror. In other words, if
> the
> files in the mirror are all 6 months old, the script will not pick
> that
> up.... yet. I do plan, however, to make it sense that and take that
> into
> account.
>
> Anyway, if anybody wants to give it a whirl, I'm open to some
> beta-testing.....
>
> - Joe
Sounds interesting, I'd be willing to beta-test it.
Jim
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