Bugzilla Bug 25243

$ mirrorselect -a -s4
Downloading a list of mirrors...
Running netselect to determine mirrors, this might take a moment...
netselect: unknown host ftp6.uni-erlangen.de
netselect: unknown host ftp6.uni-erlangen.de
No mirrors have been selected. Exiting.

$ mirrorselect -v
Mirrorselect version: 0.6

This happens everytime.  It complains about unknown hosts and then after a while
exits.  It exits without setting mirrors even when there is no error about
unknown hosts.

$ emerge info
Portage 2.0.48-r7 (default-x86-1.4, gcc-3.2.3, glibc-2.3.2-r1)
=================================================================
System uname: 2.4.21 i686 Intel(R) Pentium(R) III Mobile CPU      1200MHz
GENTOO_MIRRORS="http://212.219.56.162/sites/www.ibiblio.org/gentoo/
http://194.83.57.3/sites/www.ibiblio.org/gentoo/
http://212.219.56.152/sites/www.ibiblio.org/gentoo/
http://194.83.57.11/sites/www.ibiblio.org/gentoo/"
CONFIG_PROTECT="/etc /var/qmail/control /usr/share/config
/usr/kde/2/share/config /usr/kde/3/share/config /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/xkb"
CONFIG_PROTECT_MASK="/etc/gconf /etc/env.d"
PORTDIR="/usr/portage"
DISTDIR="/usr/portage/distfiles"
PKGDIR="/usr/portage/packages"
PORTAGE_TMPDIR="/var/tmp"
PORTDIR_OVERLAY=""
USE="x86 oss 3dnow avi crypt encode foomaticdb gif jpeg mad mmx mpeg ncurses
pdflib png quicktime truetype xml2 xmms xv zlib directfb berkdb slang readline
bonobo svga java mysql X sdl gpm tcpd pam libwww ssl perl python imlib oggvorbis
gtk motif opengl cdr aalib acpi acpi4linux apache2 dvd faad fax fbcon imap
kerberos maildir md5sum nptl offensive pcmcia pnp sse tiff usb xml -apm -arts
-cups -kde -libg++ -mikmod -nls -qt -spell -gtkhtml -gdbm -tcltk -guile -esd
-gnome -mozilla"
COMPILER="gcc3"
CHOST="i686-pc-linux-gnu"
CFLAGS="-march=pentium3 -O3 -pipe"
CXXFLAGS="-march=pentium3 -O3 -pipe"
ACCEPT_KEYWORDS="x86 ~x86"
MAKEOPTS="-j3"
AUTOCLEAN="yes"
SYNC="rsync://rsync.europe.gentoo.org/gentoo-portage"
FEATURES="sandbox ccache buildpkg fixpackages"

for the record, I had this same problem even with 0.5 every once in a while. 
It seemed to happen when I was using a lot of my bandwidth up (not all of it,
just enough to slow things down).

Depending on and using netselect makes mirrorselect slower, bulkier and more
error prone.  Perhaps interactive mode should be the only mode of working. 
That will be faster, better distributed geographically and less likely to cause
problems.  Just a thought.

automatic mode is an optional mode, and by no means is ideal. it does have a
few drawbacks, although all problems I currently know about will have a fix in
the next release of mirrorselect.

They are nearly always related to routing, dns, or other similar problems.
it should still return a list, and those errors imo arent whats stopping it,
some routers prevent 40+ requests all at the samew time, so mirrorselect will
in furture split it into blocks of 5 at a time, where possible.

The splitting up into 5 requests is a good one.  I have yet to have
mirrorselect work in automatic mode for the past several versions.  I'll be
anxious to try it when it's ready.

-Dan

mirrorselect-0.7 has now been comitted to portage testing.
this contains a block-select update to allow it to bypass routers which block over a certain number of simultaneous(sp?) lookups. (appears to not select anything if you run -a -s4)

Please test away if this effects you.
mirrorselect -a -s3 -b10