On Sat, Jan 15, 2011 at 9:03 AM, Zeb Palmer zeb@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.
-Jeff
On Sat, 15 Jan 2011, Jeff Sheltren wrote:
On Sat, Jan 15, 2011 at 9:03 AM, Zeb Palmer zeb@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
- 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).
This is probably the most pressing issue. If somehow, all the masters can be synced at first, before releasing to the public, that would greatly reduce the gripes most mirror admins have.
- 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.
Yes, and that is why I am not very fond of the "torrents" idea. I would prefer to not have all the mirrors go through some manual work to update their mirrors. Once again, the "ping pong" is a remnant of "out of sync" masters, as described in #2 above.
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.
I would agree on this one, that 5.6 is more relevant as of now, than 6.0.
Regards HASSAN
My $0.02:
I fully concur with #2. I'm not sure how to functionally deploy this unless perhaps the 6.0 tree is sync'ed on the same filesystem but outside the rsync tree, then a script is run on all the master mirrors at the right time (at/cron job?) that moves the 6 tree into its proper place. There's probably a better way; I only run one mirror, not a network of mirrors.
With respect to mirror bandwidth, I know I have a lot, and we just upgraded ours. That said, I have long thought that it makes more sense to distribute iso's via torrents for the initial download. "Dangling a carrot" to encourage users to use torrents intead of mirror bandwidth might be good; making the iso available 24hrs in advance via torrents will help to distribute the download more so, and help show torrents have valid, legal, real-world application :) Of course, in that case I'd also be hosting a torrent seed or two from my servers....
I don't think the original post mentioned anything about seeding the mirrors from the torrent iso; that seems like its unnecessary, error-prone, and a lot of work. I think it was more to address the above: help move end user downloads off the mirror server network during a peak download event. Again, I'm for it, but I would say something like "release 24hrs early via torrents" would be a good thing. That would give the mirror servers a bit more time to download and sync. Perhaps the tree without iso's should be sync'ed on the mirrors first, with the iso's available only via torrents for the first 24-48 hrs....
In any case, I suggest/expect that the torrent seeds/downloads would not effect mirror operators or the servers themselves unless the admin decided to also seed the torrent. Of course, all mirrors would benefit by offloading those users that "have to have it as soon as its released".
Also, perhaps this would be a good time for the new mirror management system? Something to more intelligently distribute downloads? I know most of the downloads from our large university don't use the mirror server located on the university network, but download from other systems while our mirror server is busily serving off-campus requests..... Such a system may also be able to distribute download requests more proportionately to the mirror server's capabilities. I've noticed often when I just use the round robin DNS, often my download is very slow on release day, while I can hit 2-4 choice mirrors and get very fast downloads.
--Jim
On Sun, Jan 16, 2011 at 4:00 AM, Nyamul Hassan nyamul@gmail.com wrote:
- 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).
This is probably the most pressing issue. If somehow, all the masters can be synced at first, before releasing to the public, that would greatly reduce the gripes most mirror admins have.
- 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.
Yes, and that is why I am not very fond of the "torrents" idea. I would prefer to not have all the mirrors go through some manual work to update their mirrors. Once again, the "ping pong" is a remnant of "out of sync" masters, as described in #2 above.
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.
I would agree on this one, that 5.6 is more relevant as of now, than 6.0. Regards HASSAN _______________________________________________ CentOS-mirror mailing list CentOS-mirror@centos.org http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos-mirror
On 01/18/2011 04:16 PM, Jim Kusznir wrote:
and sync. Perhaps the tree without iso's should be sync'ed on the mirrors first, with the iso's available only via torrents for the first 24-48 hrs....
This is perhaps something we can trial. But it would make kernel.org quite unhappy. Also the other problem we have is that with over a 100 machines in 80+ DC's around the world, just seeding the .centos.org network takes about 2 days. We did optimise some of the routes that we use and have been doing regular pipeline testing to see what are the best sort of rsync tree's we can setup, but 2 days is realistically the earliest we can open msync up to external mirrors.
Then there is the issue of non-public private mirrors rsyncing off msync and contesting with the public mirrors :/ Last time I checked ( and I accept this was a while back ) - we had about 3800 people pulling from msync, we dont have nearly as many public mirrors.
In any case, I suggest/expect that the torrent seeds/downloads would not effect mirror operators or the servers themselves unless the admin decided to also seed the torrent. Of course, all mirrors would benefit by offloading those users that "have to have it as soon as its released".
Also, perhaps this would be a good time for the new mirror management system?
I know that Ralph is working on something of this nature, and there are atleast a couple more people helping and there have been some spike tests for various options. So its definitely in the pipeline, not sure if there is a delivery-date though.
- KB
So perhaps it would make sense to release the .iso's immediately via torrent while the mirror tree still sync's itself? Users who want to be "early adopters" would need to accept it would be a few days before the package tree is available. It would also allow the .iso's to be released in the mirror tree after the rest of the tree is already sync'ed.
--Jim
On Wed, Jan 19, 2011 at 3:35 AM, Karanbir Singh mail-lists@karan.org wrote:
On 01/18/2011 04:16 PM, Jim Kusznir wrote:
and sync. Perhaps the tree without iso's should be sync'ed on the mirrors first, with the iso's available only via torrents for the first 24-48 hrs....
This is perhaps something we can trial. But it would make kernel.org quite unhappy. Also the other problem we have is that with over a 100 machines in 80+ DC's around the world, just seeding the .centos.org network takes about 2 days. We did optimise some of the routes that we use and have been doing regular pipeline testing to see what are the best sort of rsync tree's we can setup, but 2 days is realistically the earliest we can open msync up to external mirrors.
Then there is the issue of non-public private mirrors rsyncing off msync and contesting with the public mirrors :/ Last time I checked ( and I accept this was a while back ) - we had about 3800 people pulling from msync, we dont have nearly as many public mirrors.
In any case, I suggest/expect that the torrent seeds/downloads would not effect mirror operators or the servers themselves unless the admin decided to also seed the torrent. Of course, all mirrors would benefit by offloading those users that "have to have it as soon as its released".
Also, perhaps this would be a good time for the new mirror management system?
I know that Ralph is working on something of this nature, and there are atleast a couple more people helping and there have been some spike tests for various options. So its definitely in the pipeline, not sure if there is a delivery-date though.
- KB
CentOS-mirror mailing list CentOS-mirror@centos.org http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos-mirror
On Fri, Jan 21, 2011 at 3:59 AM, Jim Kusznir jkusznir@gmail.com wrote:
So perhaps it would make sense to release the .iso's immediately via torrent while the mirror tree still sync's itself? Users who want to be "early adopters" would need to accept it would be a few days before the package tree is available. It would also allow the .iso's to be released in the mirror tree after the rest of the tree is already sync'ed.
--Jim
On Wed, Jan 19, 2011 at 3:35 AM, Karanbir Singh mail-lists@karan.org wrote:
On 01/18/2011 04:16 PM, Jim Kusznir wrote:
and sync. Perhaps the tree without iso's should be sync'ed on the mirrors first, with the iso's available only via torrents for the first 24-48 hrs....
This is perhaps something we can trial. But it would make kernel.org quite unhappy. Also the other problem we have is that with over a 100 machines in 80+ DC's around the world, just seeding the .centos.org network takes about 2 days. We did optimise some of the routes that we use and have been doing regular pipeline testing to see what are the best sort of rsync tree's we can setup, but 2 days is realistically the earliest we can open msync up to external mirrors.
Then there is the issue of non-public private mirrors rsyncing off msync and contesting with the public mirrors :/ Last time I checked ( and I accept this was a while back ) - we had about 3800 people pulling from msync, we dont have nearly as many public mirrors.
In any case, I suggest/expect that the torrent seeds/downloads would not effect mirror operators or the servers themselves unless the admin decided to also seed the torrent. Of course, all mirrors would benefit by offloading those users that "have to have it as soon as its released".
Also, perhaps this would be a good time for the new mirror management system?
I know that Ralph is working on something of this nature, and there are atleast a couple more people helping and there have been some spike tests for various options. So its definitely in the pipeline, not sure if there is a delivery-date though.
- KB
I would like to second Jim Kusznir's idea.. Upload the torrent on various infamous torrenting sites
*cough* *cough* bay *cough* of *cough* pirates *cough*
Regards
-
David Richardson -
Jeff Sheltren -
Jim Kusznir -
Karanbir Singh -
Maulvi Bakar -
Nyamul Hassan