Joel Rees wrote:
> Last week, when the kernel update came down the pipe, most of the
> packages had decent speed, but the kernel and some others were cut
> down to about a fifth normal speed.
What archive name are you using? I am in the US and use
ftp.us.debian.org and when I do I am actually using one of several
servers.
$ host -t a ftp.us.debian.org
ftp.us.debian.org has address 64.50.236.52
ftp.us.debian.org has address 64.50.233.100
ftp.us.debian.org has address 128.61.240.89
$ host -t a ftp.us.debian.org | awk '{print$NF}' | xargs -L1 host -t ptr
100.233.50.64.in-addr.arpa domain name pointer ftp-nyc.osuosl.org.
89.240.61.128.in-addr.arpa domain name pointer debian.gtisc.gatech.edu.
52.236.50.64.in-addr.arpa domain name pointer ftp-chi.osuosl.org.
That is for today. The records are routinely updated as mirrors come
and go. Sometimes a mirror will have problems and need to be dropped
out. That will be discussed on the debian-mirrors list.
Normally apt will round-robin among the servers in the list.
Sometimes one server will be having problems and will be slow.
Perhaps it is saturating its network connection. Perhaps it is
suffering a denial of service attack. Your experience sounds like
one of the mirrors at that time was likely suffering.
Alternatively there is http.debian.net. It is a CDN. It is a way to
use a redirector to dynamically select an appropriate mirror. I have
been using it and it has been working well for me. See this for
documentation.
http://http.debian.net/
> Yesterday or Saturday, when I ran apt-get update, I got server access
> errors on wheezy, including backports and security. Ran apt-get clean
> and the access errors went away.
"apt-get clean" simply purges the downloaded .deb files. It shouldn't
change what you saw. But "apt-get update" will have an effect. I
think one "apt-get update" failed due to the mirror selection but then
the next one succeeded. Maybe. I think it likely.
> Today, I get access errors again, and they go away after apt-get
> clean. And all packages are downloading at about a fifth my max speed
> from the provider.
It is also possible that the routes over the Internet through your ISP
are asymmetrical at this time. You could "traceroute" to each of the
mirrors you are using in turn and see how the routes are different.
Look at the times. Use ping to check each. It isn't unusual to find
routers in a path that are sick and troubling.
There is a Debian package netselect that can be used to probe
different archive servers.
apt-cache show netselect
http://github.com/apenwarr/netselect
> I'm feeling a little paranoid about this. Should I just assume my
> wan-side connection is getting saturated for some reason?
I wouldn't be worried about security because Debian releases are
cryptographically signed. But I would probe and try to understand the
network slowness.
Bob
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