up2date

[Jeremy]

Guys, I -did- search the archive before subscribing and asking, like i said, i
got hundreds of matches, most of them had nothing to do with my problem, and
the ones that did, had no posted responses.  It wasn't until afterwards that i
came on this mailing list and asked.  I don't join this mailing list unless I
absolutly cannot find the answer elsewhere, because it results in an un-godly
amount of traffic for my email.  I searched for "up2date Traceback".  I had no
idea it was because my sources file was not configured correctly, so i had no
reason to search for "rhn sources" or anything of that sort.

Honestly, having answers in the mailing list archive isn't helpful.  The
answers are hard to find if you don't know exactly what you're looking for (If
you did know exactly what you were looking for, you wouldn't need to look).  I
read the up2date man page, the yum manpage, checked all the pages on the Fedora
site, and searched this mailing list archive all before joining.  I've been
using Linux for 5 years now, and I know how to RTFM.  But when answers aren't
in logical places, the answers themselves are pointless.  It's like a secret
treasure, it does no-one any good if you can't find it.  I'm not sure exactly
who runs the Fedora site, but someone should update the fedora FAQ to actually
include helpful answers to common questions about Fedora.  Keeping your system
up-to-date is a very basic thing to want.  If people are running insecure
Fedora boxes, it puts everyone at risk becuase those insecure boxes can be used
in things such as DDoS attacks.  You shouldn't -have- to RTFM to keep a Fedora
box up-to-date.

I also read the reply from Christopher, where he gave examples about how his
search queries were like 31 and #4 in Google.  But like -I- said, when I made
my searches, and when I subscribed to this channel, i had no idea it was
because my sources file was incorrect.  My sources file has been that way for
some time, and it has been working that way for some time.  I had no reason to
think it was incorrect.

The fact is, if you get so many people asking this same question, there should
be a FAQ entry on the Fedora site.  You can't get pissed off at hundreds of
different people for all having the same problem.  The fact that so many people
all have the same problem says something in and of itself.  I'm no stranger to
mailing lists, so i know how annoying it is to answer the same question over
and over.  That's why i don't like mailing lists, and I cringe whenever I go to
a site that says "If you have questions, subscribe to our mailing list!".  They
aren't good for the people seeking answers, and they are annoying for the
people providing the answers.

I'm terribly sorry I bothered ya'll over this, but keeping my system up-to-date
is my #1 priority.  I really did RTFM before I came here, honest, but I had no
idea what was causing them problem, all i knew was I was getting a Traceback
error in up2date, so that's what I looked for.

-Jeremy

Alexander Dalloz <alexander.dalloz at uni-bielefeld.de> wrote:Am Di, den
17.02.2004 schrieb Jeremy um 16:49:
> Hrm, people like you are what keep people away from Linux....
> 
> There is no documentation anywhere that I can find that explains exactly how
to configure this sources file. When I did a search on the mailing list for
"up2date Traceback", I got hundreds of matches, very few of them had anything
to do with my problem, the ones that did, had no responses posted. When I setup
this file, I had no idea that you couldn't have the same name twice... I don't
necessarilly think that is the case, either, because up2date has been working
under this configuration. What I do think, is that if someone posted a FAQ on
the fedora website, explaining how to select a mirror, how to configure the
sources file, people like me wouldn't have to subscribe to this mailing list,
to ask, just to get shot down for not knowing the format for some undocumented
file.
> 
> Someone else said the Stanford mirror was busy? Ugh, it seems like no matter
which one I choose, it's either very slow or has too many users connected.
> 
> Someone else also said that HTTP is preferred? I'll try that, I've just
always assumed that FTP would be prefered for file downloads.
> 
> Also, what about the 'updates-released' deal? Do i need to use a mirror for
that too?
> 
> -Jeremy

Jeremy!

You can search inside this list's archive without being subscribed. And
it is easy to find out that this topic is so often answered. Mid of
January I found it is enough and wrote a basic howto - easy to find in
the archive too - Christoph gave the link already in his answer shortly:

http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-list/2004-January/msg03379.html

Meanwhile I reviewed the article and it is now available as an HTML site
at

http://fedoranews.org/contributors/alexander_dalloz/mirror/

Regards, with a friendly RTFM :)

Alexander


-- 
Alexander Dalloz | Enger, Germany | GPG key 1024D/ED695653 1999-07-13
Fedora GNU/Linux Core 1 (Yarrow) on Athlon CPU kernel 2.4.22-1.2166.nptl
Sirendipity 19:25:45 up 2 days, 23:04, load average: 0.79, 0.35, 0.24 
[ Γνωθι σ'αυτον - gnothi seauton ]



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