Use apt-p2p To Improve Ubuntu 9.04 Upgrade

An anonymous reader writes "With Jaunty Jackalope scheduled for release in 12 days on April 23, this blog posting describes how to switch to apt-p2p in preparation for the upgrade. This should help significantly to reduce the load on the mirrors, smooth out the upgrade experience for all involved, and bypass the numerous problems that have occurred in the past on Ubuntu release day. Remember to disable all third-party repositories beforehand."

good idea but...

[mrphoton]

I had wondered for a while why yum and apt did not do this by default. It would seem a great ideal. However.... I recently tried to down load fedora 11 alpha via bit torrent using a BT internet connection in the UK. It worked great for about 10Mb (@90-100kb/s), then the download speed gradually ground to a halt. (5kb/s) When I tried a direct download of the same iso the speed bumped back up to a steady 100kb/s. I concluded BT was throttling my bit torrent connection of a legal download to a very slow speed.
So my point is sounds like a great idea but if it is enabled by default it had better have some way to detect bandwidth throttling of p2p networks and revert to http transfer.

Slower to start

[Nomaxxx]

I've used apt-p2p as an apt-get replacement for a short time. It often downloads faster than the standard method but is slower to start downloading. So it's not great when you have many small packages to install. But for a full system upgrade I guess it's a good alternative. Especially on (or close to) launch date when you're sure that update manager will go idle midway through the upgrade. Other alternative is to wait for a week or too after release date when servers are less busy.

Bandwidth usage

[Chris_Jefferson]

I'm concerned that after reading the article, and apt-p2p's FAQ page, that I can't find any guide to how much upload bandwidth this thing will use. While I'm all for sharing, I find it important to cap my upload speed so my connection performs well on other stuff I'm doing, and also stop uploading once I'm at 1:1 sharing or so. Some of us pay if we use too much bandwidth!

If you want to get the new release when it's hot

[badpazzword]

I honestly suggest to upgrade when the RC is out (1). That's one week before the actual release date, or in other words Thursday. FYI, when I upgraded to the Alpha 6 I had to download 1.3 GBs; torrenting as much is still going to take a lot of time.

The Release Candidate is typically identical to the "gold" release; also you will help Canonical in testing everything runs as good as it should. If you install apt-p2p (2) you'll even get the warm fuzzy feeling of being a seed for the new packages. :D

The upgrade process is identical -- the only difference is in starting it. Hit Alt-F2 and use "update-manager -d" then hit "Upgrade".

(1) Or hell, upgrade /right now/. I'm using the beta and it is rather stable and experience tells me the beta is always pretty near to what goes gold.
(2) I wouldn't use apt-p2p to upgrade to a dev version as you will find far less peers. However installing it afterwards should let you act as a seed for those packages.

Re:good idea but...

[nurb432]

I had wondered for a while why yum and apt did not do this by default. *snip*

Because it would be wrong to default to forcing a person to share their limited resources.

It should be enabled by default

[Anonymous Coward]

I think it should just be enabled by default, maybe it will take massive legitimate P2P use to force ISPs to stop throttling P2P connections. It's a chicken and egg scenario... do we wait for them to stop throttling P2P to make heavy use of it, or do we make heavy use of it and force ISPs to stop throttling it? I don't think they will just do it out of the kindness of their hearts, so it will take a demonstration to make it happen.

Re:Bandwidth usage

[stevied]

Just installed it, there's an option in /etc/apt-p2p.conf to limit the upload bandwidth. I haven't tested it yet, however ..

Re:Alternate CD

[QuantumRiff]

No, as he stated, you can get the alternate disc from bittorrent as well. Then use that to upgrade to 9.04. That would DRASTICALLY reduce the load on the mirrors..

Re:Mirror anxiety

[turbidostato]

"Is it just me or is the fun game of "pick your closest mirror" not very fun at all? Just download the damn thing at best possible speed. I don't care where you get it from. "

You are aware that "closest" in this context means "faster", aren't you?

"As if I'm in a position to pick the best site where to download something from. Give me a break. Apologies to the power users who can lick their Ethernet cable and tell which site will have the best download performance and availability."

Probably is too much a power user the one able to install the package "apt-spy" which will build a sources.list for you based on bandwith probes, isn't it?

Oh, and please, don't let parent post at +Insigthful when it's plain -Nonsense.

Re:good idea but...

[Anonymous Coward]

I concluded BT was throttling my bit torrent connection of a legal download to a very slow speed.

I had the same experience here, and came to the same conclusion. Throttling by more than 95% seemed norm rather than exception anytime I wanted to run an update. So I dropped BT like a hot potato as my ISP and switched provider. After the obligatory problems getting re-connected (aren't there any providers competent enough to do the job right the first time around?) things are running smoothly now. I highly recommend voting with your wallet if you're not satisfied with your current service.

Re:good idea but...

[RalphSleigh]

As far as I can tell, British Telecom's retail ISP (BT) throttle Bittorrent (BT) to around 10 kb/sec down during peak times, but leaving torrents on overnight works well, as they unthrottle around midnight, and I can usually max out my 8Mb/sec ADSL with bittorrent overnight. This is the only limitation I have come across so am pretty happy with them as an ISP.

Re:Website and Warning

[smallfries]

Good point, I had of course forgotten that the blocks are constant size. That would require a much better attack than those currently available.

You are aware that there is an attack for MD5 when the length isn't specified though? There is a demo that will produce forged pdf documents with a given md5 hash.