> Joe Emenaker wrote: > > Some time ago, I asked about any utility that could take a list of > machines > and find the one that's closest, so that I could find the best mirror > to > point dselect to. Someone responded that I should try "netselect", > which did > help a lot. However, netselect has a couple of shortcomings: > > o It only tests ping times, not actual transfer rates of data > o It doesn't check to see if there's an ftp server there. > o It doesn't check to see if the ftp server accepts anonymous login > o It doesn't check to see if the ftp server even *still* mirrors the > debian tree > > These last two are a real pain... especially the last one. Many of the > sites > I tried first in the mirrrors list didn't have the debian tree > anymore. > Hrmph! > > So, anyway.... I broke down and wrote a little perl script which takes > a > README.mirrors.txt and tries to connect to each of the mirrors listed. > It > tries to connect anonymously and tries to navagate to the directory > where > the debian tree is supposed to be and then it actually tries to > download a > file from the site to see what kind of transfer rate it gets. > > It does *not* check for *currency* of the mirror. In other words, if > the > files in the mirror are all 6 months old, the script will not pick > that > up.... yet. I do plan, however, to make it sense that and take that > into > account. > > Anyway, if anybody wants to give it a whirl, I'm open to some > beta-testing..... > > - Joe
Sounds interesting, I'd be willing to beta-test it. Jim
