GNU bug report logs - #26201
Downloading substitutes is too slow upon nginx cache misses

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From: Tobias Geerinckx-Rice <me <at> tobias.gr>
To: dian_cecht <at> zoho.com
Cc: 26201 <at> debbugs.gnu.org
Subject: bug#26201: No notification of cache misses when downloading substitutes
Date: Tue, 21 Mar 2017 04:57:09 +0100

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Ahoy,

On 21/03/17 03:52, dian_cecht <at> zoho.com wrote:
> The URL displayed during the download was mirror.hydra.gnu.org.
> [...] It was a binary download, not source.

Oh, OK. I'm not an expert on how Hydra's set up these days, but will
assume it's not too different from my own (a fast nginx proxy_cache,
mirror.hydra.gnu.org, in front of a slower build farm, hydra.gnu.org).

Whenever you're the first to request a substitute, mirror.hydra.gnu.org
transparently forwards the request to hydra.gnu.org.

The latter has to compress the response on the fly, leading to much
slower transfer speeds. It slowly sends it back to the mirror, which
slowly sends it on to you while also saving it on disc so all subsequent
downloads will be fast — by Hydra standards – and not involve hydra.gnu.org.

Maybe you knew all this, but it's also the reason that...

> On 21/03/17 02:44, dian_cecht <at> zoho.com wrote:
> It would be nice if there was some notification that a cache miss
> happened and the download will likely be slow, otherwise a user might
> wonder what problem there is with their connection.

...I'm afraid this makes no sense from guix's point of view.

The term ‘cache miss’ here is an implementation detail of our current
Hydra set-up, not something guix can or IMO should care about. There are
hundreds of reasons why your connection might be slow at any given time.
Guix should just tell you so (it does), not guess why. Or worse: know.

(But if others disagree, we'll have to extend the Hydra API to somehow
relay this information to the client, in the spirit of the modern Web.)

HTTP 200½: OK, fine, but it's Going to Suck.

T G-R

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