RE: NO huge packages, please!

["Peter A. Castro" <doctor at fruitbat dot org>]

On Thu, 7 Nov 2002, Randall R Schulz wrote:

> Peter,
> 
> At 10:10 2002-11-07, Peter A. Castro wrote:
> >On Thu, 7 Nov 2002, Randall R Schulz wrote:
> >
> > > At 09:43 2002-11-07, Peter A. Castro wrote:
> > > >...
> > > >
> > > >... Perhaps it would be better to enhance the Setup tool to be a little
> > > >more robust in it's download processing.  Perhaps adding a re-try option
> > > >on an incomplete package pull?  I haven't looked into the guts of Setup
> > > >for a while, but I'd bet that this might be doable with a minimum hassle.
> > >
> > > Peter,
> > > Setup does this already.
> >
> >Hmmm, then perhaps this is a more recent addition?  I seem to recall
> >having problems in this area a while ago (which is one of the reasons I
> >have a local mirror).  That or perhaps it was some other problem and just
> >showed similar symptoms.  Since I've been using a local mirror, I haven't
> >experienced anything like what we've been talking about.  But, if this is
> >the case, and Setup has had this functionality for a while, then why was
> >the subject of having trouble downloading over an unreliable connection
> >coming up?  I'm a bit confused as to which problem we are addressing here
> >now.
> >
> >--
> >Peter A. Castro <doctor@fruitbat.org> or <Peter.Castro@oracle.com>
> >         "Cats are just autistic Dogs" -- Dr. Tony Attwood
> 
> 
> Well, I suppose the conversation drifted a bit. Mark Harig suggesting 
> alternate software for mirroring in order to mitigate the effects of an 
> unreliable Internet connection.
> 
> While it's true that Setup does have a retry facility if something goes 
> wrong during download, it's manual: if a failure occurs during package 
> download, then when everything is done you get an alert stating that there 
> was a problem and asking if you want to retry. Then you're taken back to 
> the page of the wizard that downloads the package list and you pretty much 
> have to start over.
> 
> Far from ideal, really.

Ah, yes, I do recall seeing this.  But, I wouldn't really call this a
re-try facility, because if 1 out of 100 packages downloaded with errors,
the "re-try" will pull all 100 packages all over again.  A far cry from
ideal, I'd say :) This is why I was proposing something much more
realtime.  Such that during the download of a package, if an error
occurs, it prompts you to re-try right there any then.  A further
optimization would be to have a checkbox to automagicaly do a re-try up
to a certain number of times. 

> On the other hand, wget is pretty automatic and is rather persistent (and 
> customizably so) in its attempts to surmount failures during downloads, so 
> there's much to recommend it for users with links that exhibit frequent 
> failures.

Except that they end up either having to craft the commands to pull only
those package directories they really want, or pull the whole she-bang.
Again, not idea.  If I get time, I'll look at Setup and see what it might
take to add this "feature" (no guarantees, though).

> By the way, thanks for giving the details on altering wget's naming 
> behavior. I figured it could handle it--it's got so many options--but I was 
> a little too lazy to go look it up.

You're welcome :)

> Randall Schulz
> Mountain View, CA USA

-- 
Peter A. Castro <doctor@fruitbat.org> or <Peter.Castro@oracle.com>
	"Cats are just autistic Dogs" -- Dr. Tony Attwood


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