Matthew Palmer wrote: > reassign 612109 choose-mirror-bin > thanks > > netcfg has nothing whatsoever to do with choosing a mirror. Just sayin'. > > On Sat, Feb 05, 2011 at 03:39:37PM -0800, Josh Triplett wrote: > > The question asking for an HTTP proxy could instead auto-detect the need > > for a proxy by trying to fetch a fixed URI (networkcheck.debian.org?) > > and only asking for a proxy if that fails to return the expected content > > of that URI. cjwatson suggested that due to the need for timeouts (in > > case of firewalls that drop packets rathe than rejecting them), the > > detection might need to start asynchronously earlier in the installer, > > but even doing it synchronously (and telling the user they can cancel if > > they know they need a proxy) seems like an improvement. > > Could you provide some rationale for using a fixed and different URI rather > than just attempting to get the Release file without a proxy and then going > back to (optionally) asking for a proxy if that fails? (I'm thinking a UI > *very* similar to netcfg's "try DHCP, if that fails ask to try again or > configure manually".
The reasoning toward putting an URL check in netcfg was that this way if the user was on a wireless network with a captive portal, netcfg could tell them it didn't work (wrong content retrieved) and allow them to loop back through and get online in a different way. In the other case, where a proxy is needed, Colin said that in some cases attempts to bypass a proxy can take a long while to time out. Presumably the network has blackholed non-proxied traffic to force proxy use. In this case, netcfg could detect that the check seemed to be taking a long time, and background the check. Then when choose-mirror runs later it could detect if the check had failed/timed out/was still running, and only then would it need to prompt for a proxy. > Again, I can't see how you couldn't do this by retrieving a Release file. Unfortunatly, netcfg doesn't know where the Release file is. But it could hardcode some places to check for Release files. -- see shy jo
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