Hi,

As I said in the title I live in China and can't seem to update any of the packages on my system. This is most probably due to the great firewall of china which really slows down international site access in my experience (as international you can count Hong Kong and Taiwan). So far I've been able to access http and ftp sites using firefox and download files manually but this is a real pain as every time I want to install something I have a lot of dependency problems.

Does anyone know of any Chinese mirrors for these files? Or else does anyone know how to change settings on YAST or Smart so that they don't timeout when downloading? When I use a download manager I can usually download the files reasonably quickly (often when I use firefox's inbuilt download manager the download stops and I cannot resume). At the moment I'm using gwget which is okay but not as good as free download manager on windows as it often stops and can't resume (I have no idea why) any suggestions of a better download manager? Also, at the moment I have to copt the link to the file and paste it into gwget; how can I make firefox use gwget as default?

Sorry for all the questions! This has been driving me up the wall, so thanks for any suggestions,

Ross

Suse 10.1 has problems with the package manager. Is that the distribution you are using?

Hi,

Yes i'm using suse 10.1. Would the packagae manager problems affect another manager such as Smart?
thanks,
Ross

If it's at all possible, switch to Suse 10.1 RM.
The Re-Mastered version just came out and they fixed all the bugs.
Every thing works perfect. I've got it running on 3 boxes.
Then go to:
http://www.thejemreport.com/mambo/content/view/254
for the repos

Hi,

Thanks, I'm already using the remastered edition. There doesn't seem to be a problem with Yast as it is running fast(ish) and I've already tried to use all the repositories listed in the Jem report; the problem is that they all timeout before finishing downloading. I can access the http and ftp sites using firefox and download them (only using a seperate download manager as firefox's standard download manager also timeouts and won't resume). Download manager gwget works okay but i've noticed that free download manager on windows works much better (faster and never times-out). Any ideas of a better download manager for suse?

Thanks ross

Are you using dial-up?

In your case I would try using wget -c outside of X windows. A gui will add some overhead, and I've noticed that the transfer rate is faster operating from the terminal. The "-c" option should let you continue a partial download. I've downloaded a Linux dvd image over several days like that.

If you would prefer to use a browser, I think that the konqueror browser will save incomplete files with a .part extension and continue a partial download if you had an interruption.

Try clicking:
menu > personal settings > peripherals > display > and then in the box click the "power control", and set the time-outs to max.

Hi,

Thanks I will give the terminal option a try.

I'm using broadband; it's very fast [B]within[B] mainland China but when accessing international sites it slows down to less than dialup (i.e. stops!) Im sure this is due to the great firewall, the only distro Ive found with a repository in China is ubuntu which updated very very quickly, but unfortunately ubuntu doesnt recognise my hardware as well as suse 10.1 which is why I switched.

Thanks,
Ross

sorry when I said timeout I meant that the package manager told me it couldn't continue downloading from the source. For example, any large file it will start download then gradually slow until its downloading in bytes per second until stopping and reporting it can't continue the download. The same happens with firefox's standard downloader it starts strongly (maybe as much as 25Kbps (WOW!)) then slows and finally stops, and strangely won't let me pause and resume (it tries to but no more data gets downloaded). Download managers seem to work much better, actually continue downloading right to the end, but then of course for every package I download I get loads of dependency problems taking me a whole afternoon to download lot of small libraries etc.

When downloading large files from a site in mainland China using Firefox's standard download tool I regularly hit speeds of 2Mb per second. It's frustrating.

I'm afraid I can't help with the main problem here, which seems to be the filtering taking place.

However, using smart, you can increase the timeout. The default is 120 seconds. So, say you want to double it to 240 seconds

As root:
Won't help with the speed problem, but maybe it'd give it more time to get what you're needing without having to start over.

have a try on
http://susewiki.org/index.php?title=Smart

it's works well on my laptop.i live in beijing,china.

Hi,
Thanks BDHamp I will definitely try to increase the timeout as suggested.
Also, ncowboy, could you tell me what addresses you are using for the 'Channels' in Smart? Thank you for the link to the wiki.

Thanks, Ross

i wanna post all channels' contents,but the LQ refused:

Hi,

using ncowboys channel list and increasing the timeout has worked - it updated very slowly last night. Just one problem: When I open Smart I get the following message:

"warning: You must fetch channel information to acquire needed filelists."

Now, I always update the lists by clicking on the refresh button in the top left hand corner. This downloads information from the channels and seems to be successful as no error is reported. Then i click update all and apply. It works - but still I get this message every time I start the manager - any ideas?

Thanks,
ross