Bug 58742 (suse43742)

<!-- SBZ_reproduce  -->
Not applicable, enhancement.

Might be helpful for suseservers.cgi ?! 

I don't think that it makes a lot of sense to use netselect server-side (for
suseservers.cgi), because the fastest suse mirror usually depends on the client
connection setup/environment...

E.g. for me ftp.gwdg.de is always the fastest mirror, as I'm on the same subnet
(134.76.x.x). 

But I still agree that it might be a nice feature to use netselect on the
client-side ;)

From the suse-beta emaillist: 
 
Op zondag 27 februari 2005 14:46, schreef Mads Martin Joergensen: 
> It does introduce another setuid binary which is bad. If you look at the 
> SuSE traceroute, it's an implementation done by Olaf Kirch not needing 
> the setuid bit set. 
 
Hi Mads, 
 
I don't see the similarities, sorry.  In case of netselect one can give it a 
bunch of  
(ftp) servers and netselect tells you which one is the fastest. 
 
E.g: 
# netselect -vv $(cat suse-ftp-mirrors) 
ftp.gwdg.de                            265 ms  15 hops   90% ok ( 9/10) 
[  737] 
download.sourceforge.net              9999 ms  30 hops    0% ok 
ftp.suse.com                           290 ms  14 hops   80% ok ( 8/10) 
[  871] 
ftp.sunet.se                           278 ms  20 hops   90% ok ( 9/10) 
[  927] 
ftp.rz.uni-ulm.de                      270 ms  26 hops  100% ok (10/10) 
[  972] 
gd.tuwien.ac.at                        269 ms  22 hops  100% ok (10/10) 
[  860] 
ftp.suselinux.hu                       278 ms  23 hops   85% ok ( 6/ 7) 
[ 1069] 
fr.rpmfind.net                        9999 ms  30 hops    0% ok 
sunsite.cnlab-switch.ch                274 ms  25 hops  100% ok (10/10) 
[  959] 
ftp3.linux.it                         9999 ms  30 hops    0% ok 
  737 ftp.gwdg.de 
 
Am Sonntag, 27. Februar 2005 19:44 schrieb Mads Martin Joergensen: 
> I was just saying we would need to 
> add another setuid bit binary to the distribution when adding this. 
 
Perhaps the netselect programmers could have a look at SuSE's traceroute  
implementation and change netselect to run as user? 
Richard, if netselect is this important for you, forward my idea to the  
netselect developers ;-) 
 
 
Eberhard writes: 
>> Richard, if netselect is this important for you, forward my idea to the 
>> netselect developers ;-) 
> 
> It's not important to me.  I think it is important for suse, it would be 
> another very good goody provided by suse ;) 
 
I like to second Richard's position very strongly: "good for SUSE". 
 
I like to see netselect not only included into the distribution, but more:  
to use it internally within the distribution, within YOU for presenting  
the user an actually prioritized "YOU server" list. 
 
I guess this is a good way to achieve that people are using "the nearest"  
YOU server. 
Even within GWDG I see again and again that users are doing their YOU 
cycles just with YaST's default choice, and neither with the nearest nor  
with the best-responding server (which fortunally is the same for us here  
again, after some hard times). 
 
> I have sent an email to Filippo... 
 
Better you than me; I had used some specially hardened words sometimes in  
similar cases against the SUSE crew when I was younger... 
 
It is good to obey if an application uses priviledged s-bit functionality. 
It is good that this is an important aspect within SUSE. 
 
 
Andreas writes: 
> I like to second Richard's position very strongly: "good for SUSE". 
 
There's a bugreport for this already, please add all the information 
to it - I'll try to find somebody for the next release to package 
this.  It's too late for 9.3 now, 
 
Andreas 
 
 
------ 
I think including netselect in YOU and informing the user that YOU is 
searching the fastest suse mirror for the user, will give suse some additional 
points in distributions reviews :) (whatever that is worth ;) 
 

The server for YOU is determined by a (kind of load-balancing) cgi script 
running on www.suse.com. netselect might not be directly applicable for YOU. 
 
 

> netselect might not be directly applicable for YOU.    
   
Why not? It can't be that hard to pass the list of mirrors to netselect, IMHO. 
 
netselect seems to be a very useful tool with advantages to 
- the users (best download speed) 
- the servers (if one gets slow because of heavy load, it won't be hit more) 
- maybe all the backbone cables because nearer servers should (theoretically)  
  should be faster 
 
So please implement this in YOU. 
 
Updating product to 10.1 (alpha) - hopefully this enhancement request can 
awake ;-) 

Concerning passing the mirrors to netselect.

What will be done with mirrors that are NOT giving the correct 
information. e.g `netselect -vv ftp.mirrorservice.org ftp.ale.org
ftp.cnnet.upr.edu ftp-linux.cc.gatech.edu`

This gives me  ftp.cnnet.upr.edu as the fastest (the others are IP 
adresses and I have no idea what is what is that)

The truth is that ftp.ale.org is the fastest for me.

Several sites do either not accept the treaceroute till their server, or do give
an IPadress. The second part can be solvid by programming `dig -x` into it. The
firt part will exlude some fast and large mirrors.

A more workable way would be to use the IP adress to decide the country and then
decide what server to use in a preferenced way. e.g. three servers are choosen
and naturally can be altered by the user at any moment. Something along the
lines of http://easyurpmi.zarb.org/index.php but YaST based instead of web based
and including IP by country with something like
http://www.maxmind.com/app/geoip_country or similar

With 10.1 we do not have a mirror list.  Harald, does this one help us - or should it get closed?

I guess it would be an option to use it to select the fastest mirror, if we only can hardwire it in 10.1.  Another option that I'm looking into right now is download.openSUSE.org / download.SUSE.com, which could help as well.

As we are really at the end of the release process I would suggest to postpone the decission to 10.2 and suggest to use the opensuse build service as soon as it is on place?

Adrian, AJ, is it ok for you?

If there is anyone who wants to maintain the netselect package, he is free to use the openSUSE build service today. In case he doesn't have an account yet, he should contact admin@openSUSE.org (which is Adrian at the moment) to get an account.

IMO it's just fine to postpone this to 10.2!

Yes, for later.

Please, use the openSUSe build service.