Rankmirror safe to cron?

futonrevolutionary · 2009-05-24 08:02:59

Hello all. I've been lurking in the few rankmirrors threads on the Arch forums, and no one seems to speak to how constantly running rankmirrors would affect your system.

Since the speeds I get right after using rankmirrors are blazing fast for a while (but they don't stay fast), can I cron it to run daily? Or will this have some negative effect on my system (I've heard that using it zealously can cause package conflicts. Any truth in this?)

Thanks.

Allan · 2009-05-24 08:09:47

I wouldn't bother... you are just testing the speed to the same servers over and over again. I doubt your mirror order will change much at all.

futonrevolutionary · 2009-05-24 08:23:46

Allan wrote:

I wouldn't bother... you are just testing the speed to the same servers over and over again. I doubt your mirror order will change much at all.

I have a global mirrorlist that consists of all the Arch mirrors on my continent. I have another mirrorlist that pacman actually uses that consists of the five fastest servers from the original mirrorlist, as determined by rankmirrors.

They do change, and I do see gains. The thing is, the gains don't last. Could there possibly be unwanted side effects of cronning rankmirrors?

Allan · 2009-05-24 08:39:33

There should be no problems using cron on rankmirrors...

fukawi2 · 2009-05-24 09:17:30

I run this job on my servers and I haven't seen any negative effects (apart from the list of comments "# Server list generated by rankmirrors..." growing

34 5 * * mon    /usr/bin/rankmirrors /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist > /tmp/mirrorlist ; /bin/mv -f /tmp/mirrorlist /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist

I know it causes a bit of extra load on the servers, but I figure once a week shouldn't cause any problems.

Last edited by fukawi2 (2009-05-24 09:19:19)

tomk · 2009-05-24 10:08:20

futonrevolutionary wrote:

They do change, and I do see gains. The thing is, the gains don't last.

If you want to do something constructive for your system, I'd suggest you investigate that instead. If your download speed keeps decreasing, you may have a network config problem somewhere along the line.

FYI, I use the same mirror all the time. Constantly, Never change my mirrorlist, ever. And I'm very happy.

Arch Linux

#1 2009-05-24 08:02:59

Rankmirror safe to cron?

#2 2009-05-24 08:09:47

Re: Rankmirror safe to cron?

#3 2009-05-24 08:23:46

Re: Rankmirror safe to cron?

#4 2009-05-24 08:39:33

Re: Rankmirror safe to cron?

#5 2009-05-24 09:17:30

Re: Rankmirror safe to cron?

#6 2009-05-24 10:08:20

Re: Rankmirror safe to cron?

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