up2date problems (use a mirror)

[Tyler larson]

For a long time, I've been having a whole lot of trouble downloading
updates. Files download *very* slowly and often arrive corrupted[*] (and
therefore fail GnuPG verification). Even downloading using a web browser
gave dismal results.

I switched to a mirror, and everything works fine... better, in fact,
and more reliably than it ever did with RedHat's server.

If any of you are having trouble with up2date or yum, I'd suggest
editing your /etc/sysconfig/rhn/sources file and selecting a mirror from
the list [http://fedora.redhat.com/download/mirrors.html] as a first
course of action.

It might even be worth while to add some functionality to up2date to
download a list of mirrors and choose one (possibly interactively with
the user, CPAN-style) rather than always using RedHat. The general
public isn't going to know how to do all this manually. And if you
browse the fedora-list archives, you'll see that people are really
feeling the pain.



[*] - The fact that a server under load would transmit corrupted data is
disturbing in itself. The problem's not the network: TCP give you the
right data, or no data at all. It's either the client (that works fine
with other mirrors, BTW) or the server. I'm under the conviction that
the issue should be investigated at least.