GUTSY: synaptic select best server chooses repository without Gutsy packages

[Kansei]

Binary package hint: synaptic

To reproduce:
1. Open Synaptic Package Manager
2. Click settings, then repositories.
3. In the 'Download From' dropdown, choose 'other'
4. Click 'Select Best Server' button. It will go do file transfer tests off a bunch of mirrors, and choose what it feels is the fastest (for me, the clarkson.edu mirror (http)).
5. Refresh package lists. It'll toss up a ton of 404 errors if the mirror doesn't have Gutsy files.

for example: http://mirror.clarkson.edu/pub/distributions/ubuntu/dists/ no gutsy there.

[Kansei (clauretano)]

Just checked from 5 other Gutsy computers in my house (my entire mythtv backend/frontend cluster runs mythbuntu (7.10). They all chose the same clarkson.edu mirror and errored out.

As soon as Gutsy becomes the release version, this will be gone, it's just annoying during testing to have to search and search for a mirror with OK speeds.

[komputes (komputes)]

This has not happened to me in a while, but I can confirm having experienced the same thing. Select Best Server chose tds.net as best server based on ping, without afterwards checking if it was a valid and updated repo. I checked the address in firefox and it's not an actual server (no packages).

I have also gotten stuck while pinging servers such as ftp.tu-chemnitz.de (177/185) or stf.if.usp.br (191/201).

I recommend better filtering through IP geo-location to cut down on the number of servers pinged, as well as testing these mirrors for content.

[Chris Moore (dooglus)]

This just happened to me running the karmic prerelease.

It chose http://mirror.math.ucdavis.edu/ubuntu/dists/ which contains no karmic packages, and so I get a bunch of 404 errors.

[Chris Moore (dooglus)]

I should probably mention that I was using the 'software sources' dialog, not synaptic, which seems to be what it's known as these days.

[Chris Moore (dooglus)]

I just tried using synaptic, and it just runs the 'software sources' tool for me to update the sources.list file - so this is in fact the same bug...