Re: Making it easier on translators

[Martin Baulig <martin home-of-linux org>]

Gregory Leblanc <GLeblanc@cu-portland.edu> writes:

> > The best way to do this is to replace `anoncvs.gnome.org' by 
> > an actual IP
> > address of a server - just try 130.239.18.151, 142.92.65.13 
> > and 192.58.206.110
> > and check which of them works best for you.
> 
> No, please don't do that!  We've got a number of mirrors for a reason.  Yes,
> sometimes one is broken, but we may as well take advantage of the
> round-robin DNS if we're going to have it.  Use anoncvs.gnome.org, 1 of 4
> times it won't work, but the other 3 times it will work, and will be
> up-to-date.  The admin of the down mirror is aware of the outage, so it will
> get fixed, one way or another.  

I was telling Hector to do this because it's the best thing to do for that
particular thing he wants to do (download all of GNOME CVS).

Normally, you're right - but when you want to download a very large part of
GNOME CVS, the only safe way to do is is to use a fixed IP.

The problem is that not all mirrors sync at the same time. So when you do such
a large download and the connection breaks down while you're in the middle of it,
you can just type the command again and continue if you're using a fixed IP -
however, with round-robin you may get another server which is a few hours older
or newer than the one you were using before.

Another reason why to use a fixed IP is that the servers are located at different
places around the world - so depending on where you are and your network
topology, you may get much better results with one of the mirrors than with the
others - for instance, in Europe you will normally want to use 130.239.18.157
(Stric's server) since it has the best connectivity in Europe - and when you're
in the US you normally want to use one of the servers there,

-- 
Martin Baulig
martin@gnome.org (private)
baulig@suse.de (work)