OK to disable AutoRefresh for some Repos?

Hello

My real OS is TW, but recently i’ve also been playing around with Leap 42.3 in some VMs. This enquiry covers both TW & Leap i think.

In https://en.opensuse.org/SDB:Add_package_repositories i read this:

Some repositories never change, like the official oss and non-oss. You should set refresh to Off for them.

On that basis, in my real TW & my Leap VMs i have now disabled the autorefresh for those two repos, in YaST.

However i’d just like to double-check my understanding here, because on reflection i’m puzzled. WHY do those two repos “never change”? I’d have thought that over time, various packages [in those repos] get revised, replaced, bug-fixed, removed, added… If users follow that advice as i now have, & disable the A/R, & some package changes later occur, they will never know… which presumably might lead to problems.

What am i misunderstanding here pls?

The OSS and non-OSS repos in Leap (in fact the non-TW, also when the word Leap is dropped in the future) releases are not changed. Patches and recommended updates come through the Update and Update non-OSS repos.

BTW, when you have not a very, very slow internet connection, the overhead of the refresh for a not changed repo is almost nil. The first question asked to the repo server will be “anything changed?”, The answer being “no”, that is it .

Thanks Henk for the very fast reply.

So if i understand you ok, it IS “safe” to follow that advice i quoted, but there’s not really any practical benefit in doing so?

Also, you specifically mentioned Leap, but does your advice equally apply to TW [specifically with it being safe to deactivate A/R, even if maybe pointless] pls?

Not that I see, but I have fiber to the home ;).
OTOH, when one of your rules of computer life is “do not do unneeded actions” (which is not a bad starting point IMHO), you may want to switch refresh off.

Well your thread is a Tumbleweed one, but you also mentioned Leap systems in the contents. That is why I (not a TW user, shouldn’t not even have started reading this thread of course) informed you about the Leap facts.

For TW, you may be better off with a TW user.

On TW you must enable the autorefresh for oss and non-oss. TW gets released over and over again, so these repos do change.

Fibre to the home… i’m very jealous. I wish i had that. Yes i do understand your advice, so thank you.

Exactly, that’s what i suspected would apply to TW, for the reason you explained… but whilst i thought this, i was not certain… you have now given me that certainty. Thank you.

In this European country we’re not allowed to be jealous of the technologies neighbouring European countries supply for their citizens: we should (maybe) have 50 MBit/s available for all (read ‘most’) households by 2018 – if we’re lucky.

FTTN, FTTC and FTTS is fairly common but, the last metre(s) aren’t so common – even if, the cable-TV network is included . . .

“Fiber” just means media, it does not say anything about speed, bandwidth or latency. Also from practical point of view, it is much easier to deal with twisted pair than with optical cable. What if you need to relocate or increase the length of it? You cannot just cut and replace.

FYI dcurtisfra & arvidjaar, the context for my remark was that i’m in Australia. If you were to search for “NBN” you would discover the debacle that is being dumped on us by our Luddite federal government. My house has been supposedly “NBN-ready” now for most of this year, but i have deliberately not made any attempt to migrate from my current mediocre ADSL2 to NBN, because i fear a medium to high probability of suffering even poorer performance than now. My home’s existing copper distance from my nearest Node is ~700m, the Node-Pillar is a further 24m from that. The best estimate for my putative NBN performance is supposedly Download Rate: 34-59 Mbps, Upload Rate: 14-24 Mbps. Both those far exceed my current ADSL2, so why have i not jumped aboard? Well if you do choose to research it you’ll see the answer, but in a nutshell, the government placed specific commercial mandates on NBN Co such that they have to charge all the ISPs/RSPs extortionate fees for connection & bandwidth. The ISPs/RSPs responded with a commercial decision to not buy adequate capacity from NBN [such that there is now bad NBN congestion at peak times, if not also beyond, in many areas], & our inadequate advertising laws allow them to falsely advertise “up to” speeds for their NBN plans that hordes of customers all over the country cannot physically achieve.

The only customers who tend to receive close to the advertised 100 Mbps down / 40 Mbps up, are those comparative but fortunate few who got FTTP before the change of government occurred in 2013 [the previous government’s plan was for ~97% of Australia to get FTTP]. For all the [majority] suckers on FTTN, like me, the horror stories are plentiful. It’s even worse for our remote & regional citizens, who have to use satellite, which is apparently horrible re latency & speeds. Statutorily I have up til ~July next year before i must migrate. There are slowly advancing plans to give our telecommunications regulator [currently a toothless tiger] much greater punitive powers, to force the ISPs/RSPs to advertise honestly & be penalised seriously when customers do not receive what they bought. Also, lots of other NBN-ready people all over the country are also doing what i’m doing [not migrating], which is apparently causing serious commercial grief for NBN Co’s cashflow against their business plan… & the rumours are that this might ultimately force them to drastically reduce their wholesale fees, such that the ISPs/RSPs will then buy adequate capacity, thus ending all the customer horror stories, & enticing many more customers to join up. If nothing improves before mid next year, i’ll have to migrate & take my chances. However the longer i do delay, the theoretically greater chance that NBN might have improved.

Hence, yes i am jealous of those fortunate ones with FTTP [or even FTTC].

I just measured (with one of those test services).
Download speed: 61.51 Mbps
Upload speed: 77.07 Mbps
Latency: 27 ms

Showoff! :stuck_out_tongue:

Here I have…
Download speed: 15 Mbps
Upload speed: 1.5 Mbps
Latency: I don’t what to talk about it
:slight_smile:

Oh Henk, that’s quite wonderful [albeit surprising that your upload speed is actually even higher than downloads]. Are good speeds like that quite common in The Netherlands, or are you on one of the better plans there?

Heehee, well hold onto your hat… here’s mine today [3 consecutive tests]:

Ping = 38, 37, 37 ms [some days i see ~50]
Download = 8.5, 8.6, 8.1 Mbps [on rare days it gets to ~10, but on other days it falls to ~4]
Upload = 0.59, 0.59, 0.59 Mbps [yes, really!].

On Thu 05 Oct 2017 10:36:02 PM CDT, GooeyGirl wrote:

brunomcl;2840721 Wrote:
> Showoff! :stuck_out_tongue:
>
> Here I have…
> Download speed: 15 Mbps
> Upload speed: 1.5 Mbps
> Latency: I don’t what to talk about it
> :slight_smile:
Heehee, well hold onto your hat… here’s mine today [3 consecutive
tests]:

Ping = 38, 37, 37 ms [some days i see ~50]
Download = 8.5, 8.6, 8.1 Mbps [on rare days it gets to ~10, but on other
days it falls to ~4]
Upload = 0.59, 0.59, 0.59 Mbps [yes, really!].

Hi
On el-cheapo cable only connection here…

Ping: 12 ms
Download: 17.35 Mbps
Upload: 1.08 Mbps

Could upgrade to either 100, 150 or 200 Mbps but happy with what we
have…


Cheers Malcolm °¿° SUSE Knowledge Partner (Linux Counter #276890)
openSUSE Leap 42.2|GNOME 3.20.2|4.4.87-18.29-default
If you find this post helpful and are logged into the web interface,
please show your appreciation and click on the star below… Thanks!

Nice ping!

The huge advantage of my “broadband” ha is that i have enough time to personally greet every incoming bit & welcome it to my pc, + hold an elaborate farewell ceremony for each departing bit. There’s nothing like the personal touch. :wink:

Indeed. After upgrading from 10 to 15 Mbit/s internet access times decreased substantially, with a lot of idle hours. Actually, it was the increase in upload speed that made the difference.

This may change with netflix/similar HD content, somewhere in the future, but for now it’s more than enough.

Ping and DL I could live with, but UL, ouch!

I have seen this too. My theory is that providers do not bother to limit upload speed for home users on assumption that they do not upload much anyway. So upload runs at full speed while download is artificially limited according to what you pay for.

Well, that is normal ADSL2 over copper phone line. I had this for quite some time as well (and I had only 1.5Mb/s download, the rest was for digital TV broadcast).

On Fri, 06 Oct 2017 00:26:01 +0000, GooeyGirl wrote:

> The huge advantage of my “broadband” ha is that i have enough time to
> personally greet every incoming bit & welcome it to my pc, + hold an
> elaborate farewell ceremony for each departing bit. There’s nothing like
> the personal touch.

Now you’re just looking for sympathy :wink:

Having started with telex, being amazed by blindingly fast 300 baud
acoustic couplers, then blown out by 1 mhz DSL, I find 10mb ADSL2 lines
to be about as much as I need anymore except on the days when I grab
4.4GIB distro downloads.