mirrors and download failure

[TinyCoreFltk]

this starts to get extremely tiring and irritating. EVERY TIME i try to download and install some app (even the smallest ones), i have to try 3, 4, (once i even tried 10 times) to download and install an app correctly. all the mirrors do the same thing. for the past 2 months this is the standard (at first i thought it was something temporary, but  it has become something usual):...

http://oi47.tinypic.com/34ozz1f.jpg  http://oi46.tinypic.com/r8f38i.jpg

this is a VirtualBox install that i use everyday, but the same thing happens to both my physical TC installations on a laptop and the desktop. i have the most recent core and apps versions and the newest mirror list. my internet works fine and i have checked it several times before i post. i don't want to ditch tinycore, but i will have to, if these wreck servers keep dying constantly...

[gerald_clark]

Then find a repo that works for you, and stick with it.

[TinyCoreFltk]

i wish i could find one working fine, but the problem is that none of the repos work fine. i have already tested many times all the mirrors included in mirrors.tcz. all of them keep dying at random. even when i tried to download the mirrors.tcz itself (4 KB file) the mirror died 3 times. it took me 2 minutes trying to do dependency check and download a 4KB file (mirrors.tcz). i have also tried installing apps with home and opt disabled (to avoid loading any existing personal settings (if any) that could intefere with the appbrowser / tce-load, causing them to fail), but even then, i had the same problem. i would say that it could be the ancient version of my virtualbox (3.1.8 ), but since this also happens to 2 real installations, it's not virtualbox's fault. until 2months ago, i had no problem at all. the dependency check and download was a little slow, (nothing to worry about), but it never failed.

[Rich]

Hi TinyCoreFltk
The connection refused message may be due to there not being any connections available on the server due to
heavy traffic. Did you happen to change your version of Tinycore two months ago? If so, does running the previous
version still behave correctly?

[coreplayer2]

....it took me 2 minutes trying to do dependency check

May I also add that it is quite normal for a dependency check to take several minutes, usually many minutes.

[TinyCoreFltk]

[EDITED TO CORRECT SOME PHRASAL INCONSISTENCIES]

around 2 months ago the older version started doing the same thing when trying to install apps. so i decided to keep the previous version (just in case something goes wrong) and install a secondary TinyCore in another partition, hoping that this would eliminate the problem, but it didn't (i asumed that something may have changed to the way tinycore connects to the mirrors).

now i try with the older version and the problem is even worse than the new one. i know that dependency check takes quite some time (and i don't care to wait as long as it's working), but this fails right from the begining, or it takes unusually longer than before to be done (and if it's done, the download fails afterwards). i don't want to ditch TinyCore    (i loved it with the first sight ) for something like this. i had overcome much worse problems than this and didn't quit (xserver incompatibilities, sound failures, etc)

[ADDED AFTER INITIAL POST]

....it took me 2 minutes trying to do dependency check

May I also add that it is quite normal for a dependency check to take several minutes, usually many minutes.

the dependency check for the particular tcz was ok (one of the 3 times i tried to download it). after the dependency check failed to download the tcz. the other 2 times it failed right from the dependency check.

[Rich]

Hi TinyCoreFltk
This sounds like it may be a mirror problem. Have tried using ibiblio to download apps?

[TinyCoreFltk]

i have tried all of them (ibilbio, vim, nluug, etc). all mirrors fail at random (other times on dependency check, other times when downloading the app, other times dependency check and app download take unusually long time to be done, while other times i can't even connect to the mirror). ibiblio (both http and ftp) have the most failures of all the others

in general, 7 out of 10 times the download fails at some point (no matter what mirror i use), and i have to retry again and again to finish it.

[Rich]

Hi TinyCoreFltk
If you enter  ifconfig  in a terminal, does it show a lot of errors or collisions?

[TinyCoreFltk]

[EDITED TO REMOVE MY MAC ADDRESS (PRIVACY AND SECURITY)]

eth0      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr [removed mac address] 
          UP BROADCAST MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:0 (errors:0) dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:0 (errors:0) dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          (collisions:0) txqueuelen:1000
          RX bytes:0 (0.0 B)  TX bytes:0 (0.0 B)
          Interrupt:17 Base address:0x8800

eth1      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr [removed mac address] 
          inet addr:192.168.1.66  Bcast:192.168.1.255  Mask:255.255.255.0
          UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:2090 (errors:0) dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:1646 (errors:0) dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          (collisions:0) txqueuelen:1000
          RX bytes:2269720 (2.1 MiB)  TX bytes:197354 (192.7 KiB)

lo        Link encap:Local Loopback 
          inet addr:127.0.0.1  Mask:255.0.0.0
          UP LOOPBACK RUNNING  MTU:16436  Metric:1
          RX packets:12 (errors:0) dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:12 (errors:0) dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          (collisions:0) txqueuelen:0
          RX bytes:600 (600.0 B)  TX bytes:600 (600.0 B)

if you mean the bold stuff in the parentheses, no, i have never seen them showing something different than zero. in fact i have never seen the whole rows (errors, dropped, overruns, frame, carrier), showing something different than zero. (i constantly monitor my network status (has been an attack attempt by some automated chinese bulls**t against me about 2 years ago, and after that i watch out everything in my network status))

[curaga]

You're the first to report this. Combined with all the mirrors failing (they are geographically diverse, and use different software), this would point to something in your connection/ISP.

We do know the great firewalls of China and UAE interfere. You're not in such a country by any chance?


edit: Especially the "connection refused" in your pic looks pretty bad. I use nluug (vim) all the time, and have never gotten such a response.

If issues with your ISP can be ruled out, it is possible your IP block / ISP have been sending spam for example, and ended up on some global blocklist. Though unlikely that all of our mirrors would use the same sources for those lists.

[TinyCoreFltk]

no, i'm not in china. (what's the UAE thing?) i'm european. greece to be exact. as far as i know my provider uses only a very basic firewall, blocking unsolited incoming connections, to ports 20-21, and 445. (i have firewall installed only to my ubuntu desktop. the 3 tinys i have, don't have firewalls)..

my provider is OTE.SA greece (the biggest provider in greece). i don't think that they have sent spam crap anywhere (and blocked), but how can i check this, just to be sure? it's unlikely though, because i can connect from time to time. if i (or the provider) was blocked, i wouldn't be able to connect at all...

as far as i have tested, for me, the ftp.vim.org works better than all the others (still having serious disconnection problems though).

[Rich]

Hi TinyCoreFltk

(what's the UAE thing?)

United Arab Emirates

[tinypoodle]

Running "ping" and "traceroute" on hosts in questions might potentially lead to some more conclusion.