[PATCH] rpm_md Metadata vs. Mirroring

[Cliff Wells]

On Thu, 2008-06-12 at 19:50 -0700, Michael Jennings wrote:
> We recently discovered that "smart update" hitting mirrors might not
> be a good idea.  Mirrors can (and do) lag behind the master site(s) to
> varying degrees, and while pulling metadata which is a day or so old
> (e.g., from a nightly mirror) isn't always a big deal, sometimes it's
> highly undesireable (e.g., urgent security updates).
> 
> Since the goal of "smart update" is to get the most up-to-date
> information available, it seems reasonable to get this directly from
> the primary server rather than a mirror.
> The attached patch does exactly that for rpm_md repositories.  (I
> didn't want to touch the others because I can't test them.)  "smart
> update" will always pull from the master, though mirror servers will
> be consulted to download packages.

And if the primary server isn't available will it fall back to a mirror?
I've not had too many issues with Fedora proper, but I've seen freshrpms
down many times (while its mirrors are available).

>   (And, as a consequence of the
> mirror penalization structure, mirrors which are perpetually
> out-of-date will incur higher penalties.)
> 
> I didn't make it a config option, but I can take a stab at doing so if
> there's interest.  Feedback is encouraged. :-)

I'll be glad to test it out, thanks for the work!

Regards,
Cliff