Bug#1099191: debian-installer: scanning the mirror stalls frequently

[Kentaro Hayashi]

Source: debian-installer
Version: 20241227
Severity: important
Tags: d-i
X-Debbugs-Cc: ***@xdump.org, debian-***@lists.debian.org


* What led up to the situation?

Tested with weekly build image (2025-02-24)

https://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/weekly-builds/amd64/iso-cd/debian-testing-
amd64-netinst.iso

Using netinst.iso, it hangs when scanning the mirror frequently.

* What exactly did you do (or not do) that was effective (or
ineffective)?

Bad case:

Debian archive mirror country: choose "Japan"
Then choose mirror "deb.debian.org"

Bad case:

Debian archive mirror country: choose "United States"
Then choose mirror "ftp.us.debian.org"

Good case:

Debian archive mirror country: choose "Japan"
Then choose mirror "ftp.jp.debian.org"

* What was the outcome of this action?

It tends to stall with "Scanning the mirror..." message.

It is reasonable taking time to choose appropriate mirror,
but no response for a long time.
It brings weird user experience.

I don't know whether it might be region specific issue.

* What outcome did you expect instead?

If it does not stall, please show something updated message time to
time.
It is hard to wait with only "Scanning the mirror..." even though the
problem is arised from mirror.

Regards,


-- System Information:
Debian Release: trixie/sid
APT prefers unstable
APT policy: (500, 'unstable')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)

Kernel: Linux 6.12.16-amd64 (SMP w/16 CPU threads; PREEMPT)
Kernel taint flags: TAINT_PROPRIETARY_MODULE, TAINT_OOT_MODULE,
TAINT_UNSIGNED_MODULE Locale: LANG=ja_JP.utf8, LC_CTYPE=ja_JP.utf8
(charmap=UTF-8), LANGUAGE not set Shell: /bin/sh linked to /usr/bin/dash
Init: systemd (via /run/systemd/system)
LSM: AppArmor: enabled

[Holger Wansing]

Hi,

Post by Kentaro Hayashi
Debian archive mirror country: choose "Japan"
Then choose mirror "deb.debian.org"
Debian archive mirror country: choose "United States"
Then choose mirror "ftp.us.debian.org"

I cannot reproduce your findings here.

Post by Kentaro Hayashi
Debian archive mirror country: choose "Japan"
Then choose mirror "ftp.jp.debian.org"
* What was the outcome of this action?
It tends to stall with "Scanning the mirror..." message.
It is reasonable taking time to choose appropriate mirror,
but no response for a long time.
It brings weird user experience.
I don't know whether it might be region specific issue.

Apparently an regional or temporary issue, yes.

Post by Kentaro Hayashi
* What outcome did you expect instead?
If it does not stall, please show something updated message time to
time.
It is hard to wait with only "Scanning the mirror..." even though the
problem is arised from mirror.

Holger

[Kentaro HAYASHI]

Hi,

Surely it might be region specific or temporary issue.

According to
Debian mirror status [1], mirrors.xtom.jp was timed-out
at that time, but it was resolved now.

I've tried again and this issue is still reproducible even though mirror
status was resolved.

[1] https://mirror-master.debian.org/status/mirror-status.html

I've collected syslog.
If the problem was reproduced, it takes 20 or 30 minites to be
processed.
It seems that choose-mirror causes this edge case.

Case 1:

Mar 2 09:54:30 choose-mirror[22395]: DEBUG: command: wget
--no-verbose http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/dists/trixie/Release -O - | grep -E
'^(Suite|Codename|Architectures):'
Mar 2 09:55:24 init: starting pid 453, tty '/dev/tty2': '-/bin/sh'
Mar 2 10:01:15 choose-mirror[22395]: DEBUG: command: wget
--no-verbose http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/dists/testing/Release -O - | grep -E
'^(Suite|Codename|Architectures):'
Mar 2 10:08:02 choose-mirror[22395]: INFO: suite/codename set to:
testing/trixie
Mar 2 10:08:02 choose-mirror[22395]: DEBUG: command: wget
--no-verbose http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian//dists/trixie/main/binary-amd64/Release -O - | grep ^Architecture:
Mar 2 10:14:48 /bin/in-target: warning: /target/etc/mtab won't be
updated since it is a symlink.


Case 2:

Mar 2 10:39:16 choose-mirror[22461]: DEBUG: command: wget
--no-verbose http://deb.debian.org/debian/dists/trixie/Release -O - | grep -E '^(
Suite|Codename|Architectures):'
Mar 2 10:48:17 choose-mirror[22461]: DEBUG: command: wget
--no-verbose http://deb.debian.org/debian/dists/testing/Release -O - | grep -E '^(Suite|Codename|Architectures):'
Mar 2 10:57:18 choose-mirror[22461]: INFO: suite/codename set to:
testing/trixie
Mar 2 10:57:18 choose-mirror[22461]: DEBUG: command: wget
--no-verbose http://deb.debian.org/debian//dists/trixie/main/binary-amd64/Release -O - | grep ^Architecture:
Mar 2 11:06:18 /bin/in-target: warning: /target/etc/mtab won't be
updated since it is a symlink.
Mar 2 11:06:24 in-target:
Get:1 http://deb.debian.org/debian trixie InRelease [175 kB]


Regards,