Alpha Repo Sloooow

[dothedog]

Hi all, Long story short, I have been a LinuxMCE user since the plutohome days, and I had a hard drive crash, so I thought it would be a good time to reload everything from scratch. In any event, I installed kubuntu 810 just fine but when running the install scripts, the apt-get downloads from the lmce repo are taking forever. The last time I looked it took about 17 hours to download 600MB. The stuff from the ubuntu repos comes down at 300-500K/s, but the stuff from lmce is in the teens. Is anyone else having this problem? or do I have a borked network setup?

DoTheDog

[colinjones]

dothedog

This is normal - remember the Kubuntu part comes from the Ubuntu/Canonical servers with enterprise grade hardware and Internet connections or more often from a local repo closer to you, often hosted by an ISP.

The Alpha is just that, and its packages are hosted on Hari's server, which obviously does not have the same kind of resources available. You are then sharing that connection with others!

Once the DVD version is available, you will be downloading the entire data set from a torrent and so have vastly more (aggregate) bandwidth available... this version is unlikely to be until the beta is released.

[bongowongo]

hoping for a quick DVD-release

[niz23]

I have at least 800kb/s from our repos, so our repos is probably not the reason.
As already pointed out we have only one server for our repo and all users share connection to that this server.

Depending on which part of the world you live in you may have a issue between your local ISP network and the one were our server is located.

Btw. I´m in sweden.

/niz23

[dothedog]

I finally got everything down (it took about 2 days). I think I know now why it was slower than it should have been. For some reason, the install set my mtu for my eth0 to 574... This also prevented any web browsers behind the firewall from connecting. I fixed it by

Code Select Expand

sudo ifconfig eth0 mtu 1500. Now web browsers work. I should try doing an apt-get to the repos to see if that makes a difference.

[colinjones]

that certainly wouldn't help! 574 is the default for the Internet, but is very historical now... I wonder if that is common in the alpha installations (perhaps only for installations that are exposed directly to the internet?)

[Marie.O]

I wonder if that is common in the alpha installations (perhaps only for installations that are exposed directly to the internet?)

There is nothing in the installer that is setting the mtu.

[colinjones]

I'm sure that's true, possy, I wouldn't expect there to be. However, I guess something in the vanilla Kubuntu install could set this if it sees a bare Internet connection... perhaps based on the DHCP reponse from the ISP...? If so, then maybe there's nothing we can do about it... its in the ISP's hands...

[hari]

the server has 40mbit bandwith available with 100mbit burst, so that should not be the limiting factor. I'm usually apt-ing with 2-3megabyte/s from that server. Maybe your ISP has bad peering agreements with "europe".

br, Hari

[dothedog]

I did another install and made sure that the MTU was set to 1500 and it was ALOT faster. I am sure it was because of the mtu being set to 574:)

[colinjones]

I did another install and made sure that the MTU was set to 1500 and it was ALOT faster. I am sure it was because of the mtu being set to 574:)

Perhaps you can do some research on what might cause Kubuntu to set an interface MTU to 576, and produce a patch that corrects this in those circumstances? Note that it may have been responding to information send from your ISP in which case it is really a problem with your ISP sending that info rather than Kubuntu itself, but even knowing that information for certain would be very handy as we can put up a wiki page that explains the situation and how to correct for it manually if a person's ISP can handle it (realistically no ISP should still be using 576 any more!)

[hari]

the ethernet interface MTU defaults to 1500. I'd suspect the same as colinjones, the ISP is probably sending DHCP option 26 with a wrong value.

best regards,
Hari

[dothedog]

Thanks for the replies guys. I had the problem when I connected the core directly to the cable modem. I tried putting a wired router between the cable modem and the core and the mtu get set correctly. So I suspect that you are correct and that Comcast is sending bad info. Although, I have in the past had different computers directly connected to the cable modem and not had the problem...

Perhaps you can do some research on what might cause Kubuntu to set an interface MTU to 576, and produce a patch that corrects this in those circumstances?

I would love to be able to do that, but I'm afraid I don't have the skills... I have hacked some config files etc. before but I am afraid this is beyond me. I guess for now, the answer is putting a router between the cable modem and core solves it.