Re: Easy to manage debian mirror

[Karl Goetz <kamping_kaiser@internode.on.net>]

T wrote:
> Hi
>
> My adjacent debian mirror, gulus.usherbrooke.ca, goes off and on often. I
> need to access my 2nd choice when it is down. So I have to change my apt
> sources.list, pull down all the package lists from it before I can do
> anything. 
>
> Now I'm thinking, I should put an persistent entry 'debian-mirror' in my
> /etc/hosts, eg:
>
> 132.194.22.137 cudlug.cudenver.edu      debian-mirror
>
>   
try adding the second server bellow the first one in your sources.list, 
apt should fail over to the working mirror.
kk

> so when I need to change my debian mirror, I just need to change this one
> line in my etc/hosts file, no changing sources.list, no pulling down
> package info that I've already got, no redundant files under
> /var/lib/apt/lists/... all in all, this would be the easiest to manage
> solution. 
>
> However, although I could do 'ping debian-mirror', 'apt-cache search',
> when doing 'apt-get update', it reported
>
>   Could not resolve 'debian-mirror'
>
> So, is there any way to make the above plan works? 
>
> PS, I also have my cache-only DNS server installed. 
>
> thank
>   
--
Karl Goetz
The buck stops there -> $
Australian Ubuntu users team - http://wiki.ubuntu.com/AustralianTeam