[Cooker] RFC: mirrors

[Oden Eriksson]

Hello.

When I met Tomasz Kojm the author of clamav at FOSDEM I remembered that I had 
an idea to improve the mirror list and that stuff.

The idea is to use the same technology that clamav uses to determine the 
closest mirror. They use geoip and some ISC BIND hacks I think. We can ask 
them about that. Maybe PowerDNS can be used as it knows about geoip.

I try to explain some of the benefits:

 * In the installer the user can chose to let the installer autodetect the 
closest mirror.

 * In the installer the language and timezone could be set automatically by 
using geoip and LOC RR (ns resource record). Each mirror must provide us with 
the LOC data (rfc1876).

 * In the installer and/or some drak* tool the closest atomic clock (ntp) can 
be autodetected by using a special NS RR.

 * The appropriate administrative drak* tools can use it too, for updates 
mirrors and such.

 * If used Mandriva can get statistics from their dns logs (great for the 
sales guys?).

 * Tools can be developed to determine accessibility and reliability of the 
mirrors and put that in the dns resource records. Bad mirrors can be disabled 
automatically. If chosen the dns data can be put in MySQL, PostgreSQL or 
OpenLDAP for easier maintenance.

 * In the future SIP/VoIP providers could be added to the NS RR.

 * etc., etc...

-- 
Regards // Oden Eriksson
Mandriva: http://www.mandriva.com
NUX: http://li.nux.se