[clug] Automatic apt/yum mirror configuration...

[Tony and Robyn Lewis]

Paul Wayper wrote:
> Hi everyone,
>
> I've thought of an interesting project and I'd like to get people's
> ideas on potential problems or features.
>
> Basically, the core idea is a website that contains configuration files
> for various apt and yum repositories, located to an IP address range. 
>   

apt-spy does some of this already.  It uses the official debian mirror 
list, and does some bandwidth tests on them, and returns a sources.list 
based on the fastest one for you.

Maybe you could extend this, or use it.

Another thing to check (that apt-spy doesn't, AFAIK) is the 
up-to-date-ness of the repository.

Another thing to consider is handling different repositories - not 
everyone wants or has ubuntu multiverse enabled, for example.  Maybe 
users could paste in their sources.list, and it would parse it, and 
return an optimised sources.list that only enables the same 
repositories.  Or if javascript lets you, read the file yourself.

Just picking a repository based on geolocation might be fairest for the 
mirrors, but will leave some users talking to a slow and/or out of date 
repository.  For example, I find Ubuntu's aus archive very slow.  IIRC 
it has had problems staying up to date at times too.

Lastly, maybe you could include Gentoo rsync mirrors too, just for giggles.

Good luck.  Sounds useful.

Tony