debootstrap failing ( part of fai )

[Satyen Sheth]

>
> It seems at least obvious that something's wrong with your mirror.
> I remember debmirror being a bit tricky. I am not a real debmirror
> expert, but to be able to say more about your problem, some questions:
>
> - are there any error messages when running debmirror?

It times out.. after reading your email.. I reran the mkdebmirror
script which comes with
fai - and included the "timeout" option.  I specified the timeout to
be large = '1800' secs I think.  I've been averaging ~1.2Kbps
download.

To answer your question, the error I was consistently getting was, my
connection timed out.  With the timeout option, I've not timed out
thus far.

> - can you use your local mirror on an installed machine, by putting it
> in the /etc/apt/sources.list and installing some packages from it?

I'll try this as soon as 'mkdebmirror' finishes it's execution

> - did you really do exactly what is described in "man debmirror"?

As I said I tried the 'mkdebmirror' script again on a different
machine.  Per you comment above, I reread the man page and that is how
I came to know of the timeout option.

> - I am using the mkdebmirror helper script that comes with FAI
> successfully - did you try that?

please see answers above.

> Henning
>
>

Question... mkdebmirror has been runing since morning ~ 8:40am (PST)
this morning.  It is now 10:45pm (PST) - (US/California). So we're now
into the 14th hour.  My link is slow(dsl 1.2 peak bursts).  I know
that I won't need ALL of the pkgs which a particular mirror has.  So
what can be tweaked with 'mkdebmirror' to ONLY download the base pkgs
necessary for me to install the basics and then update my fai client
via script, using 'apt'.  I"m assuming, that it didn't take you over
14 hours to build your local mirror.  Perhaps something of this nature
is metioned somewhere in the fai docs?  I'll scan the debmirror man
page again for an answer, but if you advise on this, all the better.

Also - all the meta data are, once again put in /files/scratch/ ....
/debmirror/.temp.  I suspect, that running fai-setup( which in turn
calls make-fai-nfsroot ) which will balk at the missing meta data? 
True?

-thanks for interest in helping to sort this out.

-Seth