accessing repositories

[Gavin Chester]

On Thu, 2007-02-22 at 21:15 -0600, Mikus Grinbergs wrote:
> Whenever a massive set of updates appears in the repositories
> I access, I'm used to some of the downloads timing out, so that
> I have to repeat the 'smart upgrade'.  Just had a clear view of
> something else that might happen:
> 
>  -  Did a 'smart update', then 'smart upgrade'.  That listed
>     many dozens of packages to be upgraded.  Went ahead -
>     during their downloads, two of those packages timed out.
> 
>  -  Repeated the 'smart upgrade' - this time smart told me
>     that those two packages could not be found.
> 
> I've concluded that in the interval between the update and
> the download (I have a slow dial-up line), the versions of
> those two packages available at that repository had been
> *changed*.  Maybe smart should publicise a note of caution
> that such situations might happen.
> 
> mikus

I can't see that being manageable - there would simply be too much noise
on the list - among other headaches :-(

I am also on a slow dialup connection and have found two things make it
work better: 1/ limit your simultaneous downloads to one or two files at
a time with something like "smart update -o max-active-downloads=1" ;
and, 2/ limit your updates to a small set of packages at any one time so
that the update is completed quicker.  The latter is easier done from
the gui, admittedly.

Gavin