Re: Bug#50284: a better apt configuration method
Jason Gunthorpe wrote:
> How about this - unless there is some sort of forced randomness (ie
> netselect) people are going to tend to choose the same site. People are
> going to click their country go 'huh' and pick the top one most of the
> time. This defeats the entire purpose of http.us which is to reasonably
> balance the load around and provide some degree of redundency.
>
> Unless given some overriding knowledge [netselect, ping, knowldge of local
> topology, whatever] I would rather eveyone use http.us than make an
> uniformed choice from the mirror list. We can grow http.us to quite a
> large number of hosts if need be, we can't grow say ftp.debian.org.
Ok, how about I make that question have a low priority? This means, people
who have indicated they are lacking in clues earlier when they set up
debconf will not see it and the defaults of US and http.us.debian.org will be
used.
(However, that's rather silly, since I doubt these people will ever find
their way into the [S]etup screen of dselect anyway.)
> Well, this still has problems. If you are going to do this then use
> apt-config to get the CD mount point and CD mounting command from the
> configuration file and use that.
Ok. So use cdrom::Mount for the mount point and something like
"/cdrom/"::Mount and "/cdrom/"::UMount, where "cdrom" is the value of
cdrom::Mount?
> > True, removal would be a nice thing to have. I'd be happy to add it in the
> > future.
>
> I think a better way of probing a mirror for life should be used. Probably
> what you should do is use
> apt-get -o APT::Get::List-Cleanup=false -o Dir::Etc::sourcelist=/tmp/foo update
Excellent idea! I've done that.
> Is the proper way to get the APT binary. This is important if someone
> chooses to put some kind of wrapper around APT.
If someone puts a wrapper around apt-get, they should install in in
/usr/local/bin, and their path should take care of ensuring it is used. Or
do you mean some other kind of wrapper?
> > > Not loading the mirror list was a big one
> >
> > That is truely strange. Where did you put it, and how did you modifiy the
> > script and did it give error messages to stderr about it?
>
> I put /tmp/Mirrors.masterlist in the variable at the top
>
> > > notice when APT failed to update a site since it didn't give any message
> > > just went back to the main screen
> >
> > if ! apt-get update 2>$tempfile; then
> > [ show tempfile ]
> >
> > I don't see how this could fail to notices apt's return code. Do you? Are
> > you sure apt failed?
>
> Yes, it had a bad URL, not sure what could have gone wrong after that.
Hm, unless it had an error and didn't return a status code, I'm still puzzled.
I need to rerpduce this problem you're having with it not finding the
MIRRORLIST file.
Even if I tell it MIRRORLIST is /dev/null and select the empty item that
comes up (well, which came up, that is now fixed), I do get an error dialog
with the full text of the apt error.
Are you getting a "Can't open /tmp/Mirrors.masterlist" error on STDERR?
> > > you know the sizes of some of your
> > > dialogs randomly change sometimes when you visit?
> >
> > Randomly? Debconf sizes the dialog to the text that is inside it.
>
> I think I got an error dialog and when ok came back to the first dialog it
> was definately much larger than it was at the start.
Hm, I'd probably need to see a screenshot to understand who's going on here.
That first screen can sometimes have text on it that says you probably
installed with cdrom, yada yada, which does make it bigger.
> > > If you hit 'cancel' in
> > > some of the dialogs it exits instead of logically returning to the start,
> >
> > Which is logical is debatable..
>
> In this case I was pretty darn surprised - I think it was prompting for a
> ftp site or something.
Ok, I'll think about making debconf interpret that as a back button. It
would be a nice solution to the problem of dialog not providing a back button.
> > > probably a few more I forget.
> >
> > Well you said it "insisted in writing invalid urls", I still don't have
> > details of that.
>
> Oh yeah, when you don't have the mirror list their is a 'space' entry in
> the site list if you pick that it creates an invalid url. I imagine it
> also do this if there are syntax errors in the mirror list. Might want to
> check that too.
Aah.
--
see shy jo
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