[OLPC New Zealand] [Testing] Testing Summary: 19 November 2011 - Auckland, New Zealand

[James Cameron]

On Sun, Nov 27, 2011 at 11:30:02AM +1300, Tom Parker wrote:
> yum is broken (and has been broken in every XO-1.75 build) so I'm
> limited to what is shipped in the standard build. Apparently there is
> nothing that can be done to fix yum except be naughty and use the olpc
> build server :( I can't find the ticket where this was explained (is
> there an easier way to search the tickets than laboriously removing each
> irrelevant filter and then trying to decide which one is relevant?). I
> think rdate is included, I'll see if I can find a public server.

Yes, yum is almost always broken, about 95% of attempts here.  It is no
transient network issue for me.  I've diagnosed this further and for me
the most likely cause is that my two ISPs have automatic unofficial
mirrors or caching proxies of Fedora and have a DNS that causes
connections from my hosts to go to their host instead of Fedora.  DNS
queries sent elsewhere give different answers.

If you are seeing it as well, I guess the symptom is more likely in
reasonably developed but remote countries, where it is worth the ISP
doing this optimisation.  Occasionally I had better results by either
tunelling to the US, using an alternate DNS server (such as 8.8.8.8
google-public-dns-a.google.com), or determining the IP address of a good
Fedora mirror and adding that to my /etc/hosts file.

Once I've successfully downloaded an RPM, and it is important, I keep a
local copy.

I search tickets using mail.  Have a look at #11272 and #1168 and
#11130.

I don't think rdate is included.  Nor is ntpdate.

-- 
James Cameron
http://quozl.linux.org.au/