<Back when I was <a complete novice I might have used a tool like this <on some occasions - not knowing better...
I always wanted to know the fastest mirrors for me, and at times it changes some from the testing I've done so far. I live in Missouri, USA and it changes from a couple mirrors from an adjoining state Illinois and one a few states away in Texas. Maybe if there were a smaller file than the 600 KB SHA256 file that doesn't change its filename between releases it might be better, but you also get a more accurate reading on dropped packages and such that the ftp program has to deal with. with /etc/pkg.conf, you can actually specify several mirrors: installpath = ... installpath += ... I'm not sure if that downloads from multiple mirrors at a time or if there is failover. I think that it is pretty darn cool to automate the process though! -Luke On Tue, Jan 19, 2016 at 2:57 AM, Erling Westenvik < [email protected]> wrote: > On Tue, Jan 19, 2016 at 01:26:15AM -0600, Luke Small wrote: > > I made a small 500 line program I call pkg_ping that calls uname -rm, > > ftp, sed, on openbsd.org/ftp.html. > > A "program"? In what language? Is your code available somewhere? > > > then it changes all the parsed http and ftp mirrors into http and ftp > > downloads and changes them to non redundant http mirrors (it has to to > > easily call ftp on it). It takes them and downloads SHA256 from the > > mirrors and the parent times how long it takes. If it takes too long > > it kills the ftp call and goes on to the next one. Then it sorts the > > results and puts the winner in /etc/pkg.conf > > So the program basically makes several network connections to > potentially some 120 servers all across the world and the "winner" is > calculated based on the "speed" it took downloading a 1.9K text file > from each of them? > Not taking into account the number of hops, nor the anti-social > behaviour of starting to download large install sets of files from the > other side of the planet when a more nearby but a little slower mirror > is available? > > > replacing all installpath instances, while leaving everything else. It > > doesn't do any network stuff directly so it probably wouldn't be much > > of a security problem, but because it needs to alter a root owned > > file, it should need root privileges. > > It doesn't need to mess with /etc/pkg.conf. Setting PKG_PATH will > override installpath. See pkg.conf(5). > > > I don't only run the release, so I don't even really know how to > > pledge it. Is this something somebody would be willing to submit to > > the project and maybe alter it slightly. > > I'm no dev and can't speak on the behalf of the project. Back when I was > a complete novice I might have used a tool like this on some occasions - > not knowing better... > As part of the base system or the installer? Hardly... > As a package? Maybe, but you would probably have to make it all yourself. > > Regards > > Erling
