Mail sent to www@gentoo.org: """ code example 1 in the handbook tells you to use mirrorselect. Instead of using mirrorselect just fill in a couple of good mirror sites """ Mail sent to gentoo-doc@gentoo.org: """ Selecting the mirror: That took at least half an hour and did not work anyway. Isn't there a way to geographically limit the scan? Also explain how to set up the mirror manually (GENTOO_MIRRORS="...") in make.conf But how? Space separated? Where do I find the URL, which directory do I have to point to ... """
To select the mirror manually you should look at : http://www.gentoo.org/main/en/mirrors.xml and select a mirror that works for you ... simply move to a mirror site on the list & take a note of the exact path it uses for that mirror because they varrie for each server, then just fill in the GENTOO_MIRROS="protocol://servername/directory" for example : ftp.belnet.be a fast mirror that works for me ... So I have in my make.conf GENTOO_MIRRORS="ftp://ftp.belnet.be/mirror/rsync.gentoo.org/gentoo/" Note this is a example but you can see it is not difficult to add the sites manually......... Hope this helps. Michael
Created attachment 50637 [details, diff] Patch for hb-install-system.xml A patch that covers both (manual and mirrorselect one) _and_ includes a paragraph on double-checking mirrorselect's results (just in case :). Unless everyone really wants to see mirrorselect go. We'll see :)
Guys, what about consider mirrorselect -i? Users wont have to wait "half an hour" as in automatic mode and ncurses display is more intuitive and friendly than have to find and write the adress by hand.
Well, using mirrorselect only to find the URLs and writing down will certainly have us receive some bugreports about "ehhh?". I mean, come on, a tool that's make for editing make.conf but we only use it to find urls? We'd be a mocking stock.
I didn't explain my idea very well. I'm not saying we have to use mirrorselect only to find in a list and write down the url selected into make.conf. What im asking is: why are we going to use the manual way (as default?) for looking at the mirrorlist and write down in make.conf, as i can see in your patch: (#links2 http://www.gentoo.org/main/en/mirrors.xml) (#nano -w /mnt/gentoo/etc/make.conf) when this issue is perfectly done by mirrorselect -i. IMHO, the manual way will report us bugs from users who havent written the correct url and a few more (unnecesary?)lines into handbook. This idea is always supossing that mirrorselect -i is able to do exactly the same as the manual way. Of course, i would prefer to have mirrorselect working well in automatic mode and, if its not posible, leave it as an alternative (as now is in your patch).
I believe that, if mirrorselect -i works, then the automatic way works as well. But then again, I might be mistaken, I don't know the mirrorselect codebase.
FYI, mirrorselect is just a bash script. IMO, the interactive way is much more user-friendly. It gets the list of mirrors from mirrors.xml on www.g.o, display the list and put the selected ones into make.conf. iirc, it's only when it tests connectivity that something goes wrong and cruft ends up in make.conf. Select a few distfiles mirrors geographically close to you with mirrorselect -i and select one rsync server with mirrorselect -i -r Simple enough.
Created attachment 51204 [details, diff] Patch for hb-install-system.xml Okay, what about this?
Instruccions for mirrorselect -i are perfect but we haven't removed the manual way and still maintained as first opci
Instruccions for mirrorselect -i are perfect but we haven't removed the manual way and still maintained as first opción. IMHO, the better way would be this: 1. Remove the manual instruccionts (because are cover by the script mirrorselect -i) they are not very friendly to users. 2. Set as default (or first option) "mirrorselect -i". 3. Set as alternative the automatic mode, mirrorselect -a (warning about the quantity of time its spends). More feedback around here?
Agreed with yoswink except suggested mirrorselect -i instructions are not perfect. First option is not quite user-friendly: start links and go to mirrors.xml, move the cursor to the mirrors of your choice, one at a time, write down the URL that is displayed on the last line of your terminal, exit, open make.conf, type the urls you have just written down... # <i> mirrorselect -i</i> is a lot simpler, isn't it? Please note that you should not redirect its output into make.conf, that's the best way to b0rk it. -i means interactive. Just # emerge mirrorselect and see for yourself.
Neysx, I have been testing using the redirection and can't see any problems with it: "mirrorselect -i -o >> test-file" Note that we cant use only "mirrorselect -i" because we are on LiveCd system before chrooting, so if you type "mirrorselect -i" the modificated file will be /etc/make.conf belonged to LiveCd not to the future make.conf under /mnt/gentoo/etc.
Switching the instructions might be better indeed (first "mirrorselect -i -o", then manual instructions). Yoswink's correct, we can't lose the "-o" since it would update /etc/make.conf instead of /mnt/gentoo/etc/make.conf. As you have noticed, I have added a paragraph that it's adviseable to double-check mirrorselect's changes in /mnt/gentoo/etc/make.conf after running mirrorselect just in case...
Created attachment 51610 [details, diff] Patch for hb-install-system.xml Third attempt. Inform the user about the variables used /but/ recommend the use of mirrorselect (as finding out the available mirrors, writing them down and then editing make.conf is more prone to errors). Keep the paragraph on double-checking make.conf =)
Fixed in CVS.
Ran into someone on #gentoo who had the same problem as bug 79264, only there wasn't the usual giant mess of gibberish - whatever garbage mirrorselect had added was invisible (to nano, anyways). Reopen.
Ok, back to work a bit on mirrorselect. First of all, i think we need more info on this: mirrorselect version, mirroselect command ran by the user, if mirrorselect was used from the livecd or not, what "garbage" mirrorselect add to make.conf, etc. Maybe a bug for mirrorselect maintainer will be handle better. Note that in the current handbook we only use: # mirrorselect -i -o >> /mnt/gentoo/etc/make.conf CC: tercel, please, any comment or idea obout this?
Thanks for adding me on the cc, I didn't even know this bug existed. For the moment I'm going to leave this closed, because I'm assuming the "crap in my make.conf" issue is the same one that many people had with the older, bash based, version of mirrorselect. It should not exist in the new version, which will be stable in a couple weeks baring any signifigant bugs. If somebody can replicate that bug with newer versions, please open a bug for that. As far as the way mirrorselect is handled in the handbook, I've realy got nothing to do with that. In my oppinion, I think it would be nice if users were presented with the option to pick mirrors by hand or to use mirrorselect.
