[CentOS] CentOS Mirrors and Adjacent country groups

[Lanny Marcus]

On Sat, Aug 29, 2009 at 9:31 AM, Johnny Hughes<johnny at centos.org> wrote:
> Lanny Marcus wrote:
<snip>
>> Johnny: A few minutes ago, I began a "yum update" for my CentOS 5.3
>> (32 bit) Desktop.  I could see a change for the fastest mirrors.  For
>> "extras" it chose  mirrors.ucr.ac.cr      About 1 1/2 hours in a
>> nonstop jet from here.  I'd never seen that before, so I'm sure it is
>> a result of the changes you have been making. Lanny
>
> Yes, it is indeed based on changes made to find geographically close
> mirrors.
>
> If there is a problem though with "number of hops" for those mirrors,
> then please let me know and we can do something else for South American
> countries.
>
> If you look at the file /var/cache/yum/timedhosts.txt (assuming you have
> fastestmirror turned on, something I highly recommend), you can see the
> times that yum saw when testing the connection last.

mirrors.ucr.ac.cr 0.189340829849
>
> Also, you can look at the following link to see the mirrorlist you are
> getting:
> http://mirrorlist.centos.org/?release=4&arch=i386&repo=os

http://mirror.centos-br.org/4.8/os/i386/
http://centos.pop.com.br/4.8/os/i386/
http://mirrors.ucr.ac.cr/centos/4.8/os/i386/
http://mirror.sanctuaryhost.com/centos/4.8/os/i386/
http://centos.omnispring.com/4.8/os/i386/
http://mirror.raystedman.net/centos/4.8/os/i386/
http://centos.cogentcloud.com/4.8/os/i386/
http://centos.secsup.org/4.8/os/i386/
http://mirrors.serveraxis.net/centos/4.8/os/i386/
http://repos.lax-noc.com/centos/4.8/os/i386/

The only one of those I saw this morning when I did the "yum update"
was the one in Costa Rica. The time to Costa Rica isn't the fastest in
the timedhosts.txt file, but it's  fast and MUCH faster than the
slowest mirrors in the list. If there is a mirror in Panama, probably
that would be good for us in Colombia too.

> On thing to remember is that you can also add a couple servers with the
> "baseurl=" line ... and that you can use both mirrorlist and baseurl at
> the same time. Fastest mirror should always pick a local mirror (time
> should be MUCH less) if it is available, then fail over to other mirrors
> is the local mirror is down.

As I mentioned the other day, I am going to try to visit with the
Network Admin at the Public University in Cali, to see if they might
add a CentOS Mirror. If not, I will send someone in IEEE Colombia an
email, the next time they send me an email and maybe they can get one
at a university in Bogota.

As I think you wrote, the mirror lists for different repos a
different. The ones in South Florida (if available) usually do very
well for me, and if they are not available, somewhere else in the S.E.
   USA.

Thank you, for your interesting explanations and help and trying to
get the best mirrors!