new setup.exe - another problem, or is this behavior expected?

[Larry Hall (Cygwin)]

On 2/27/2014 12:44 PM, carolus wrote:
> On my last download, a few days ago, when the initial server became
> unresponsive, the setup process simply hung up even though I had selected
> several alternate servers.  After waiting a while, I terminated and
> restarted the process but again the process hung up.  I had to remove the
> offending server from the selected list to get the download to proceed.
> However, when I did so, it downloaded a lot of duplicates of files already
> downloaded from the failed server.
>
> This is not what I expected on the basis of past experience, but the
> installation instructions simply state: "You can select multiple mirrors by
> holding down CTRL and clicking on each one." with no explanation of the
> expected consequences.
>
> I asked for an explanation but have gotten no response:
> http://cygwin.com/ml/cygwin/2014-02/msg00596.html

Good that you persevered then. :-)

I do believe the point of supporting multiple server selections is to allow
you to add servers with differing package sets.  Cygport comes to mind.  If
you're choosing multiple Cygwin mirror servers and expecting fault
tolerance, I'm afraid you're looking for allot more than setup's equipped
to deliver.  ;-)  In addition, if you start one session of setup, select a
package, download it, and don't install it (for whatever reason), then
start another setup session and do the same thing with a with a different
mirror, you'll get the same package again under a different directory tree
(the root of that tree being loosely named after the mirror you chose).  So
the moral to the story is that you shouldn't select more than 1 mirror
unless you know there's something in one that's not in the other and
preferably there's no overlap.

-- 
Larry

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