Mageia forum

I am in Australia, and the Australian mirror is at aarnet.edu.au . At present, it is lacking an essential synthesis or hdlist file, and I am unable to update from it. This has been the case for a couple of days. I have been selecting a specific mirror, but it would be preferable only to exclude the Aussie one. Is this possible? The only option in MCC is to select only one. I don't mind editing config files.

laidlaws wrote:I am in Australia, and the Australian mirror is at aarnet.edu.au .....

May I share a decision that I made years ago with Mandriva
and now with Mageia. I do not depend on a remote repo
for my updates and installs. I build a local repo. I
realize that that's pretty big but I think as you get
used to dealing with it your better off. Right now I
have local repos for

Mandriva 2010.2 32-bit
Mageia 1 32-bit
Mageia 2 32-bit
Mageia 2 64-bit

The server hosting these repos is the Mandy 2010.2
and that will be converted to Mageia 2 when it is
released in Apr/May. This is especially useful if
you are more then running one workstation.

Also if you are running a local repo it moves only
when and if you update it. The advantage of that
is that it does not move during the time you are
doing an install. If I have a critical system to
install I first update the local repo, sometimes
several times to get the update time down to a few
minutes. This to ensure that it's not moving when
I install. Then I do a test Vbox install against
the local repo. If that is successful then I am
confident that I have a good, and stable, local
repo to use for the critical install. You'll find
this most useful if you are doing anything with
Cauldron.

Also running a local repo you can choose your
source. I use mirrors.kernel.org. IMO a very
good source, if your willing to let the update
run over night would be: distrib-coffee.ipsl.jussieu.fr

Updates on Sundays late European time are the
most stable.

MCC -> Software Management -> Configure media sources for ...
The first column of the display you get ("Enable") allows you to individually enable/disable media - I think that is what you want.

Code: Select all

I don't mind editing config files

You could also edit /etc/urpmi/urpmi.cfg and add an "ignore" line to the definition of the medium you want to disable (the "ignore" option is not documented in "man urpmi.cfg" - nevertheless, has been working for >> 20 years now.

Why dont you contact your edu site and tell them that something is wrong?

laidlaws wrote:I am in Australia, and the Australian mirror is at aarnet.edu.au . At present, it is lacking an essential synthesis or hdlist file, and I am unable to update from it. This has been the case for a couple of days. I have been selecting a specific mirror, but it would be preferable only to exclude the Aussie one. Is this possible? The only option in MCC is to select only one. I don't mind editing config files.

As far as I know there is no way to blacklist a mirror when using $MIRRORLIST.
You could contact the mirror maintainer but if the problem persists please file a bug report so that the problem mirror gets removed from MIRRORLIST.

Yes, that is what I want to do, not to deselect a specific repository. Urpmi used to try an alternative mirror, now it just keeps failing.

Well, just find out which mirror works good for you and just add all repositories from that specific mirror, problem solved, no?

That is what I did in the end. I contacted Aarnet, and they obligingly did a manual rsync. That was no better, nor was the one in Taiwan. I was more concerned about loading a mirror unfairly. I finally went to ibiblio.org, and am downloading from it at the moment. The number prefixed to the hdlist file was very different. That may suggest that mirrors in our part of the world are out of date in general. I am using a Japanese mirror for the Mageia 1 release.

wilcal wrote:

laidlaws wrote:I am in Australia, and the Australian mirror is at aarnet.edu.au .....

May I share a decision that I made years ago with Mandriva
and now with Mageia. I do not depend on a remote repo
for my updates and installs. I build a local repo. I
realize that that's pretty big but I think as you get
used to dealing with it your better off.

That is OK if you have plenty of disk space and a broadband connection. Right now, fibre optic broadband is being rolled out in Australia. Opposition policy is against it, and they are likely to win the next general election. I am using ADSL2+. Updating Cauldron from the Mga 1 dual arch will take about an hour.

laidlaws wrote:

wilcal wrote:

laidlaws wrote:I am in Australia, and the Australian mirror is at aarnet.edu.au .....

May I share a decision that I made years ago with Mandriva
and now with Mageia. I do not depend on a remote repo
for my updates and installs. I build a local repo.

You seem to forget the fact that for creating a local mirror you still
need a reliable and up-to-date mirror as source, which does not solve the
key problem ...