[CentOS-mirror] [CentOS-devel] irc meeting today re: 5.6/6.0

[David Richardson]

On Sat, 15 Jan 2011, Jeff Sheltren wrote:

> On Sat, Jan 15, 2011 at 9:03 AM, Zeb Palmer <zeb at zebpalmer.com> wrote:
>>
>> You may also consider doing what I believe has been done on this project
>> once or twice before. (maybe it was a different project, its been a while)
>> When the iso is ready, put the torrent(s) out with only a 95% seed. I can
>> seed 20Mbs  24/365 and as shown already, many of us have this kind of
>> bandwidth to share. If 5.6 and 6 are done at the same time get 5.6 on the
>> mirror and start seeding 6, doing this would encourage people to use the
>> torrent to get it as early as possible and since it can't 100% done yet,
>> many would end up seeding longer than usual waiting for the other 5%. This
>> would take a lot of load off the mirrors and when you are happy with the
>> mirrors, release the other 5% of the seed and put the isos on the mirrors.
>>
>
> Perhaps this whole conversation is better suited to the centos-mirrors
> list.  I'm cross-posting there in hopes of moving any further mirror
> discussions off of -devel.
>
> Personally, I think the mirror infrastructure in place is more than
> sufficient for releases and there's no need to complicate things with
> seeding torrents (full or partial) before the official release on the
> mirrors.
>
> Do people have problems with slow downloads just after a centos
> release?  I can say our mirrors have always had plenty of bandwidth to
> spare during a centos release.


As a (non-centos.org) mirror admin, there's a couple things I want to 
mention:

1) Torrents are useful for getting the ISOs. ISOs are useful for new
    installations. They are not very useful for updates. Until the mirrors
    (both centos.org and not) have the packages in the usual place, already
    installed users won't get anything.

2) We need to be thorough in the release process. It wastes time and
    bandwidth for mirrors to download content from one master, only to have
    the next cycle hit a different master that doesn't have the new content
    (at which point the mirror deletes the content it had downloaded).

3) Trying to pre-load a mirror from the ISOs is a manual process, it's
    error-prone, and it's a pain in the butt. Mixed with the ping-pong
    effect, it's not worth the time nor the trouble. Most mirrors won't get
    the new content until they get it from rsync.

As long as seeding a 95% torrent doesn't delay the synchronization of the 
mirror network or delay the official release, I have no argument against 
it. Don't delay the mirror network to aid the torrents.

In the matter of 5.6 versus 6.0, I'll echo sentiments already expressed. 
There are 5.5 machines in production today. Those machines aren't getting 
updates until 5.6 comes out. Nobody is depending on the 6.0 tree yet. 
Don't delay 5.6 for 6.0.

DR

-- 
"Use every man after his desert, and who should 'scape whipping?"
   -- Hamlet, Act II, Scene II