On Sun, 2007-04-01 at 11:10 -0400, Dan McGee wrote:
> On 4/1/07, Michael M. <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > Unfortunately, I had a problem afterwards.  I installed 'gnome' and it
> > went *very* slowly.  It took hours to download all the packages.  I'm
> > guessing the mirrors are being hit hard by the new release.  I didn't
> > change any of the defaults in pacman.conf.  I remember seeing a message
> > not long ago, here or from the Planet Arch RSS feed, about too many
> > users using a particular mirror or something, so I didn't want to monkey
> > around with anything and mess things up further.  Anyway, I went to bed
> > so I haven't really done much with Arch yet except get it installed,
> > which is a good enough accomplishment for one day anyway.  I'll try
> > again later on and see if things improve.  I don't have time right now
> > to play around with it.
> 
> Your mistake was not changing the mirror list. ftp.archlinux.org is
> currently throttled, leading to the slowness of your downloads. You
> may want to try moving another mirror to the top and searching again,
> or using the "rankmirrors" script (search the forums for references).

I've moved the second mirror on the list to the top and get better
speeds with it.  It didn't, as of Sunday evening US Pacific DST, seem to
be synced yet with ftp.archlinux.org because pacman spit out a long list
of packages (all the Gnome packages I had already installed) that were
newer on my system than in the repository.  I guess it will catch up
shortly.

I have to say, I don't understand the rationale behind providing users
who newly install Arch Linux with a default server that is throttled so
drastically.  That's not exactly a nice introduction to Arch.  I think
most users, especially those new to Arch, will presume that a brand new
install will be set up properly with regard to how pacman works and
where it connects at the outset.  If the powers that be don't want
people using ftp.archlinux.org, then why make it the default?  I trusted
that the devs would have set things up as they need in order best to
manage the resources at Arch's disposal.  It concerns me that this was a
"mistake" on my part.  IMO, users should be warned the first time they
run pacman that they need to edit the mirror list to avoid ending up on
a throttled server; failing that, it should be the very first item on
the post-install to-do's.


-- 
Michael M. ++ Portland, OR ++ USA
"No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions
of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to
dream." --S. Jackson


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