Hello,
On Sat, May 08, 2021 at 06:04:44PM +0100, Adam Spiers wrote:
> On Sat, May 08, 2021 at 09:15:46AM +0000, Andy Smith wrote:
> > The reason why "deb.debian.org" isn't in the list is because that mirror
> > is a geo-ip thing that redirects to what it thinks is the nearest fastly
> > CDN node. It's mainly used for giving out to people when you don't know
> > where in the world they are so giving them a geographical mirror would
> > not be appropriate. Also for mobile users, for example.
> >
> > Doesn't make a lot of sense for things permanently located in London,
> > which is why the default setting is "ftp.uk.debian.org".
>
> OK. IMHO the problem seems to be a combination of the following:
>
> - https://backports.debian.org/Instructions/ only mentions
> deb.debian.org, and says nothing about alternative mirrors.
Debian's instructions are probably that way because they don't know
what country the viewer may be in, so directs people to a geo-ip
redirector. All Debian mirrors are meant to carry the same stuff so
anything you can get from deb.debian.org you should also be able to
get from
ftp.uk.debian.org or
ftp.de.debian.org and so on.
> - https://tools.bitfolk.com/wiki/Apt-cacher#Available_mirrors doesn't
> mention deb.debian.org, and even though backports.debian.org is
> listed, it doesn't explain how to derive a source correctly pointing
> to a Bitfolk mirror of backports.
Once you know that
ftp.uk.debian.org/debian/ can be used any place
that deb.debian.org/debian/ is mentioned then hopefully you can see
that what you wanted was:
deb http://apt-cacher.lon.bitfolk.com/debian/ftp.uk.debian.org/debian/ buster-backports main
Please do edit the article in a way that you think would make that
obvious to anyone in future!
> Prior to emailing the list, I tried several combinations of hosts and paths
> before giving up and just using deb.debian.org.
The other thing the article should make clear, but obviously
doesn't, is that if you try to use anything that's not in the list
of "available mirrors" then it won't work, and you should just use
it directly.
So even if someone did not spot that they could use
"
ftp.uk.debian.org" instead of "deb.debian.org", I would have hoped
that they would then think, "oh, it's not in the list, so I will
need to use it directly". Which you did eventually do but not until
getting frustrated trying a few things.
So if you can think of some wording that would have made it clear
that any attempt to jam "deb.debian.org" onto the end of the
apt-cacher URI would not work, because it's not in the allowed list,
please do add it!
The other thing is, maybe it was not clear that just not using the
apt-cacher is not a big deal? All it does is save your data transfer
quota the bytes of downloading the packages and maybe is quicker if
another customer already downloaded them. That was a bigger deal back
in 2007 when customers had 100GB/month to use. Not so much today
when it's 4TB. Just following the Debian backports instructions
directly leads to something that works the way it's expected to.
> I'm unsure how to derive the correct cached source URL, given that
> the official backport instructions don't give a source URL which uses
> ftp.uk.debian.org or backports.debian.org (or any of the other mirrors
> listed in the wiki page).
Maybe this is clearer now that I've explained that
"deb.debian.org/debian" and "
ftp.uk.debian.org/debian" are
essentially interchangeable?
> I suspect a few small additions in the places I've highlighted
> (Debian pages too, not just Bitfolk) would have made things
> clearer.
Just make the changes to the BitFolk wiki articles that you think
make things clearer. If you make mistakes then I or someone else
will correct them hopefully without destroying the intent of what
you added. As it stands I don't know how to make them clearer maybe
because I don't know what people don't know, if you see what I mean.
Like the fact that the article pre-dates the existence of
deb.debian.org and I didn't know that Debian pages were using
"deb.debian.org/debian" more consistently as opposed to saying
things like "YOUR-DEBIAN-MIRROR/debian".
I don't think I want to add deb.debian.org to the apt-cacher allowed
list as I don't really see the point in it doing a geo-ip
redirection back to some other UK mirror. May as well just
explicitly use
ftp.uk. I think I'd rather that people understood
that if they want to use a mirror that's not cached by apt-cacher
then just use it directly.
Cheers,
Andy
--
https://bitfolk.com/ -- No-nonsense VPS hosting
