Presently, for a given SRC_URI, portage first tries to fetch from the gentoo mirrors ($GENTOO_MIRRORS), then from the SRC_URI itself. If the SRC_URI utilizes thirdpartymirrors via mirror://FOO/path-and-filename, that is then used there. There are two parts to this. 1. mirrorselect should be runable on thirdpartymirrors to produce an optimized list for each of the possible mirror sources on a per system basis. 2. portage should be able to select the fastest SRC_URI for each download between the GENTOO_MIRRORS and the actual SRC_URI value. In the case of thirdpartymirrors, this comes in even more crucial. An example of this. If I wanted to fetch dev-db/mysql, a 12Mb download, I'm getting 60kb/s from oregonstate at the moment, and thats the fastest gentoo server from where I am. However, I used the fastest available MySQL mirror (mysql.mirrored.ca), I would be getting 900kb/s. An idea for the implementation: Selecting the fastest server is a process of exclusion. You generally still get the same result if you weed out many of the slow servers earlier. G = total set of gentoo mirrors H = total set of mirrors for a given site mirror://mysql/ I = fastest subset of gentoo mirrors (present mirrorselect functionality) J = fastest subset of site mirrors (simple extension of mirrorselect, /var/cache/edb/thirdpartymirrors.optimized?) M = netselect run on merged I+J (run at fetch time from portage/ebuild) then portage fetches from the best result of 'M' one thing that should be improved in mirrorselect for this. by default, we can select by latency, as that is a fair indicatior of speed to a given server. however, being able to select by country [from IP] (http://ip-to- country.com/database/), and by throughput to a given site would be a vast improvement, esp. for users of satellite internet (high throughput, but long latency).
hmm.. sounds a bit complicated maybe.. u'd need quite huge lists of all src_uris in portage .. + possible download speed limitation + latency ..
/me
just my approach... I think if it were to be done itll be in 2 stages. 1: mirrorselect to optimize thirdpartymirrors 2: portage to run netselect on gentoo_mirrors+optimized thirdpartymirrors when needed 2, in my mind might not be very efficient, and perhaps just use a thirdpartymirrors optimized file but as for #1, I'm all for that idea although itll have to somehoe move outside of the portage tree, to something like /var/cache/edb/thirdpartymirrors, and for portage to use that, if it exists anyone against this?
My few cents: 1. A new variable telling to use either gentoo first or the third party mirrors first, so something like 'USE_3RD_PARTY_MIRROR=YES emerge foobar' is possible 2. Perhaps this could be 'leveled up'. I set (e.g.) LOCATION=de which tells portage to use rsync.de.gentoo... and sets german/european mirrors for gentoo and third party stuff. Of course you should be able to supercede this via vars. I think this would speed up installs a lot without having to tinker with all the special vars. 3. (somewhat off topic, but this bugs be a lot lately) If the crc check fails, automatically refetch the file from the source URI.
portage 2.0.49 is now rotation thirdparty mirrors
not valid right now. thirdpartymirrors is randomized by portage. will muull over with carpaski one day
reopening as per discussion on -core at the moment.
/etc/portage/mirrors now supports 'favored' mirror selection see portage(5) in portage-2.0.50_preX
closing
