download speed

[Mikus Grinbergs]

Used to be able to use smart to upgrade my SuSE 10.1 x86_64 MP system,
even though it involved downloading large files.  Recently, every time
there is a large download, some transfer or other times out, and I
have to restart my upgrade.  Don't know if the network is getting more
congested, or if recent smart versions have gotten less robust.

But restarts of the upgrade I tried today haven't helped.  There were
ten files in all;  eight downloaded;  two are timing out.  When I
restart the upgrade, some tens of thousands of bytes get downloaded
(but gkrellm shows only sporadic bursts of transfers, with intervals
of no activity on the connection) - then the downloads of individual
files stall.  That is typically followed by a resumption of the data
transfer for the file - which soon stalls out again.  Eventually smart
does not resume the data transfer for a stalled file;  when all
remaining files have had their data transfer ended, smart's whole
'upgrade' process times out.  There are about two dozen megabytes yet
to be downloaded - at today's effective rate (and with many manual
restarts) the downloads might not complete 'till the end of the month.

I'm on a dial-up line.  Doing a smart 'update' shows in gkrellm as a
continuous series of data transfers at full line speed - so I don't
think my connection to the ISP is at fault.  The problem downloads,
though, show in gkrellm at much less than full line speed.


I wouldn't mind starting an upgrade and then going to bed, as long as
the associated downloads did not stall despite the connection to the
repository still being available.  Is there some sort of parameter
which I can set to tell smart to "keep going" with a download, instead
of stalling out and then ending its download operation ?


mikus