Hi Ariel,

Yes, it is weird but there are some reasons for it.

MirrorCache is responsible for figuring out where a user should be sent to, and MirrorCache returns a list of multiple mirrors ranked by a rule (freshness, distance, and other things). Even in Uruguay, for a given package, you may not end up in your mirror because there's a better-ranked mirror somewhere else.

If the file is not found in your mirror, you need to be sent somewhere else, if there's a mirror closer to you that is not your own mirror, you also may end up in another one. There are some other cases, like how up to date, your uptime, and other things that count towards this scoring algorithm.

We are also aware that even with mirrors in certain countries, like Chile, for example, people are still sent to Brazil for some requests.
Now I'm also aware that Uruguay has the same problems as Chile. I've seen similar problems even in Europe.

Brazil has big mirrors namely UFPR (C3SL) and now Locaweb, that have a lot of what users want and they are very much in sync with our main openSUSE servers, which contributes a lot to users from other SA countries ending up in Brazil.

There are some limitations on what we can do about this, and because of such problems, Mirror Sorcerer was born [1] (community project).
We have been looking into ways to improve this, but I'm not sure how far we are with the changes.

We have a new rsync server, with less data but a faster network, it is stage-main-repos.opensuse.org.
Last time I checked, to fully copy state-main-repos, you had to have around 5 TB of disk space, and this will cover pretty much all common needs of users.
Maybe you want to switch to it, as you can sync more frequently and faster from it.

I have been working on improving the quality of our infrastructure in South America, mainly in Brazil, but also in a few other countries and it is not easy to solve everything, to be honest. Brazil is a huge country, South America has terrible internet backbones, and many countries have better links to the US than other countries in SA itself, which is a shame.

I don't think there's anything wrong with your setup, it is just that there are better-ranked mirrors in SA. I'll talk to Andrii and check if there's anything that we can do to improve this situation a bit.

I hope that this clarifies things a bit more, and I'll try to keep you updated on any changes we introduce to improve this behavior.

Best,

Alex

[1]: https://github.com/Firstyear/mirrorsorcerer

March 8, 2023 12:59 PM, "ariel sabiguero yawelak" <asabigue@fing.edu.uy> wrote:

Thanks for your answer!

We are refreshing every 4 hours, now we will check hourly (let's say, less than one hour after the previous rsync finishes).

I know that our big brother Brasil is there, but even traffic from Uruguay is routed to Brasil... that is what I found weird. (as a matter of fact, I realized it downloading from home and being redirected to Brasil, not our mirror).

Formerly we rsynced from:

rsync://stage.opensuse.org/opensuse-full-really-everything-including-repositories/opensuse

and found that after big updates in one branch, it took ages for other branches to become updated, thus, we broke the initial script into

  • rsync_opensuse_ports
  • rsync_opensuse_debug
  • rsync_opensuse_repositories
  • rsync_opensuse_distribution
  • rsync_opensuse_tumbleweed
  • rsync_opensuse_history
  • rsync_opensuse_update

so each of these branches update in parallel.... but we are not syncing the root folder anymore. Do you think that it could make any trouble?

thanks again

ariel

On 8/3/23 8:45, redmine@opensuse.org wrote:
[openSUSE Tracker] Issue #125615 has been updated by avicenzi. Assignee set to andriinikitin Hi Ariel, My theory is that we now have many mirrors in South America, more precisely, in Brazil. The requests are sent to the closest mirror based on distance (lat/long) from IPs, so, as Brazil is the biggest country and has the most openSUSE users, requests are not leaving the country that easily. The south of Brazil is now covered by a mirror in Porto Alegre (RS) and Florianópolis (SC) before these users could go to São Paulo or even Uruguay. This leaves your mirror for most likely Uruguayan users and depending on the freshness of the data, users can still be sent somewhere else (RS, SC, or SP in Brazil due to distance) in case the files are not found in your mirror. I also noticed that many users are on Tumbleweed in SA, and your mirror is red because the data is not fresh. To solve that you should sync more frequently, maybe every 2h or even a shorter period. This is just a theory for now, but Andrii may be able to dig some metrics from our servers. Best, Alex ---------------------------------------- tickets #125615: Problem with our mirror https://progress.opensuse.org/issues/125615#change-610511 * Author: asabigue@fder.edu.uy * Status: New * Priority: Normal * Assignee: andriinikitin * Category: Mirrors * Target version: ---------------------------------------- Hello! We are receiving almost no traffic to our mirror, but we don't see any trouble with the data, update scripts or other working details. I checked at https://mirrors.opensuse.org/ where we are still listed, yet, few things on green. Could you please let us know if there is something not working as expected? Our mirror is espejito.fder.edu.uy regards ariel