Wish: monitor Contents-{arch}.gz availability on mirrors

[era]

Binary package hint: apt-file

In the light of bug 176754, wouldn't it be nice if the script which produces nice stats like https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+mirror/nic.funet.fi would also probe for the availability of Contents-i386.gz etc files on mirrors?

I have no idea what this component is called, but it's a useful requirement mainly for apt-file users, so I hope you will forgive me for filing it here, and hoping you will take it from here.

[era (era)]

In the light of discussions in bug #567895, subscribing ubuntu-mirror-admins here as well.

[Mattias Wadenstein (maswan)]

This makes very little sense to me. If mirrors are filtering out specific files there is nothing short of a full scan of all files that might help, adding a few sets of files as random probes seems like a weird way of finding that out.

The cause for user confusion here is that only some of the repositories create Contents files, it has nothing to do with mirrors.

[era (era)]

See also now bug #619659. If apt-file itself has the responsibility to keep track of which mirrors it can use, then I suppose there needs to be a way for Ubuntu apt-file maintainers to know which mirrors are OK for apt-file. But maybe this infrastructure doesn't need to be visible in Launchpad or coordinated with mirror admins.

[Mattias Wadenstein (maswan)]

This still has nothing to do with mirrors. All mirrors of a repository has Contents files if the repository has generated them. If the repository does not have Contents files, no mirror will have them.

What you are trying to say is that some repositories don't have Contents files generated, and that a) it would be nice if they were generated and b) apt-file should handle that more gracefully than throwing 404's in the face of the user.

If there is any mirror actually removing files from the repository, they should be removed from the list of official mirrors. I've yet to hear of this happening anywhere though.