A European mirror for MX-14 / MEPIS 12 repositories

[timkb4cq]

Community Repository traffic hit an all-time record last month at over twice the prior years average. Only 1/3 of this traffic was from the US, while Germany, France, U.K, & Italy together accounted for another 1/3.

Accordingly, I've set up a repository mirror in the Netherlands that should serve our European users better, as well as provide some desirable redundancy.

The mirror is located at http://nl.mxrepo.com and these URLs may be used in place of the corresponding main.mepis-deb entries you are currently using.

deb http://nl.mxrepo.com/mepiscr/xfce/ xfce-4.10 main
deb http://nl.mxrepo.com/mepiscr/repo/ mepis12cr main non-free
# deb http://nl.mxrepo.com/mepiscr/mx-test/ mx-14 test
# deb http://nl.mxrepo.com/mepiscr/testrepo/ mepis12cr test

BTW, mxrepo.com also points to the old US server and may be used interchangeably with main.mepis-deb.org

Enjoy!

[Jerry3904]

I've set up a repository mirror in the Netherlands

How did you do that, exactly?

<Well done, BTW!>

[timkb4cq]

It's a self-managed VPS, running debian and using apt-mirror to sync. Whenever I upload packages to the old server I take a few seconds to trigger apt-mirror on the new one. Unless there are some massive packages it takes less than a minute to sync.

[Gaer Boy]

A good development, Tim. For the information of those who might benefit, I've been using the new mirror since last weekend and it definitely gives a better speed for me. In particular, reloading the repos is about twice as fast as before.

Phil

[Jerry3904]

How is this going to be handled systemically?

I have trouble seeing a scenario where every user finds out about this in some haphazard fashion, tries to figure out how to change from the default setup, makes errors, etc. Seems like a headache both for the user and for maintenance.

Would it be best to get this done during installation? Maybe a single question about which server to use, or does the installer do it automatically by location? Or does a button go in MX Tools? Etc.

It seems to me that the Dev Team might want to mull this over a bit sometime.

[timkb4cq]

Debian uses a question during install, and maintains a list of hundreds of mirrors. Users wishing to change mirrors after installation are left to edit their sources manually.
I don't think we'll have too much trouble. Most users don't change sources after installation unless they have a problem.

[Jerry3904]

Can't say as I think having users do manual edits is optimal for our mission and audience.

[lucky9]

I've thought that the migration instructions have been reasonably functional. Perhaps a note would be useful in the Docs or here at the forum. Adding a note and link to instructions on the forum might be easiest?

[ko]

EU users of Mepis 12 and MX: replace (as root) the contents of /etc/apt/sources.list.d/mepis.list as follows to point to the dutch mirror:

# Dutch Mirror of Mepis Community Main and Test Repos for Mepis 12 and MX
deb http://nl.mxrepo.com/mepiscr/xfce/ xfce-4.10 main
deb http://nl.mxrepo.com/mepiscr/repo/ mepis12cr main non-free
deb http://nl.mxrepo.com/mepiscr/mx-test/ mx-14 test
deb http://nl.mxrepo.com/mepiscr/testrepo/ mepis12cr test

Disable test repos if deemed necessary. Mine are enabled.

btw: in the debian.list I always use european ( .nl. or .de.) debian repos, replacing the default .us. ones

[Gaer Boy]

On a Live boot, using F2 to select English (UK) the UK debian mirrors are listed in sources. I don't know where this magic happens, but could something similar be done for the MX mirrors?