From owner-freebsd-current Tue Oct 31 20: 1:56 2000 Delivered-To: freebsd-current@freebsd.org Received: from wall.polstra.com (rtrwan160.accessone.com [206.213.115.74]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 8109537B4CF for ; Tue, 31 Oct 2000 20:01:53 -0800 (PST) Received: from vashon.polstra.com (vashon.polstra.com [206.213.73.13]) by wall.polstra.com (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id UAA24549; Tue, 31 Oct 2000 20:01:27 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from jdp@wall.polstra.com) Received: (from jdp@localhost) by vashon.polstra.com (8.11.0/8.11.0) id eA141QQ06098; Tue, 31 Oct 2000 20:01:26 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from jdp) Date: Tue, 31 Oct 2000 20:01:26 -0800 (PST) Message-Id: <200011010401.eA141QQ06098@vashon.polstra.com> To: current@freebsd.org From: John Polstra Cc: janb@cs.utep.edu Subject: Re: Wierdness with cvsup In-Reply-To: References: Organization: Polstra & Co., Seattle, WA Sender: owner-freebsd-current@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG In article , wrote: > I am using cvsup to update my sources. in the supfile, there is a > line that states *default compress. The comment above indicates to > comment this out when you have a fast connection. I DO have a fast > connection (100+ K sustained to ftp.freebsd.org) But when I comment > this line out, cvsup indicates a smaller update rate than when I > leave it in. Can someone shed light on this? Sure! The idea behind the comment in the sample supfile is that for link speeds beyond a certain point, compression takes so much CPU time that it slows things down more than just sending the bits uncompressed. That certain point depends on a lot of things -- the speed of your CPU, the speed of your mirror's CPU, etc. So it is ultimately up to you to decide whether to use compression or not, based on your experiences. Second, the "update rate" can be misleading if you don't understand what it means. It's the total size of the files actually updated divided by the elapsed time. It tends to be kind of meaningless unless a lot of files get updated. If you do an update where nothing has changed and therefore no files are updated, the update rate will be 0. So it doesn't work to look at the update rate with compression on, then turn off compression, update again, and look at the update rate a second time. On your second update probably nothing will be updated, because everything was already up-to-date from your first update. The bottom line is, do what seems to work well for you. In cases where compression maybe makes a little difference but not much, don't use it. That will help lighten the CPU load on the mirrors. John -- John Polstra jdp@polstra.com John D. Polstra & Co., Inc. Seattle, Washington USA "Disappointment is a good sign of basic intelligence." -- Chögyam Trungpa To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-current" in the body of the message