Wiki » Feature:Urpmi redirects if local mirror unavailable

Summary

If, when installing packages, either as a result of the updater applet, user initiated update of system via MCC or installation of new software, the local mirror becomes unavailable, and packages fail to install as a result, let urpmi look for another mirror to complete the package installation.

EDIT: Also add ability to URPMI to determine if local mirror is up to date. urpmi could check the local mirror for updates, if there are updates, then apply them. If the local mirror says there's no updates, check against mirror status to ensure it's up to date. If the local mirror is lagging warn the user, then advise/offer to change mirror, or apply updates from another mirror.

Owner

• Name: Ben McMonagle
• Email: Westel@xtra.co.nz

Edited by Xboxboy, after contacting request owner.

Resources

List here people who will be implied in this feature (packagers, QA, doc, ...)

Current status

• Targeted release: Mageia 6
• Last updated: 2025/05/11
• Percentage of completion: <XX>%

Detailed Description

From time to time, when accepting an update via the Updater Applet, an error message with "exit aria 2¨ [or some other reason] and "failed to install packages xyz. would you like to retry y/N" is displayed.

This can happen for any number of reasons; the mirror is down, updating or over-subscribed.

The user must then delay the update or manually choose another mirror manually.

Ideally, it would possible to force the updater to auto-magically look for another mirror when this happens [or maybe a user input prompt window] and then continue with the update.

At the completion of the update, it would then revert back to the original local mirror.

EDIT: After a few weeks without updates, I thought I better check http://mirrors.mageia.org/status and found my mirror was lagging, hence no updates. It would be nice if urpmi had the ability to automatically realise that the local mirror is lagging.

Why it would be good for Mageia to include it

It would improve the user experience as it would enable users to complete package installation with the minimum of fuss with little or no intervention apart from the initialisation of the process.

EDIT: If user is unaware of lagging mirror, then security updates are missed currently, posing security issues.

Alternative mitigation of the problem: mirrorbrain

mirrorbrain as the server component could prevent sending the user to a non-up-to-date/unreachable mirror, and would also provide optional geolocation aware use of mirrors/would allow to assign scores to mirrors. see bug#3166

Fallback to another mirror might still be desired, as there might be routing or other network congestions that cannot be detected by the mirrorbrain instance.

Test case

Anything useful for QA and all testers to help debugging during all development cycle

Software / Packages Dependencies

List of packages to be implied

Planning

= Contingency = Currently urpmi doesn't attempt to overcome either of these issues. In the case of failed updates the user is at least warned, but in the case of lagging mirror, the user may never receive critical security updates.