Timeout ports.ubuntu.com

[dheeg]

While running chisel cut operations, we very often see the following error, after which chisel exits:

#0 50.26 error: cannot talk to archive: Get "http://ports.ubuntu.com/ubuntu-ports/dists/noble/InRelease": context deadline exceeded (Client.Timeout exceeded while awaiting headers)

Since the timeout and the mirror are both not configurable via CLI parameters, we basically have to retry until ports.ubuntu.com is fast enough, which is a frustrating process as it can take multiple hours. Using another internet connection does not solve the problem.

I would appreciate if it would be possible to configure ubuntuURL, ubuntuOldReleasesURL and ubuntuPortsURL via optional CLI parameters or if chisel would respect the local sources configuration under /etc/apt

[letFunny]

Giving the user the ability to change those via CLI parameters would potentially solve two scenarios. a) Use an internal mirror and b) use a public mirror of choice. The default values could be what is currently hard-coded. Would you accept such an PR?

This is a good idea, thank you for the suggestion and for your interest in the project! This is on our roadmap, it is just that we didn't have time to get to it yet. At the moment we are working hard on the next major feature that has been a pain point for a long time (using Chisel twice on the same system should update the installation). This is not an easy task if we wanted to do it right as we have to be careful about correctness and about not bloating the overlay fs.

All I am trying to say is that we promise we will get around to do this as soon as we merge the feature above. Then, we will happily revive this thread and talk about designs.

In the meanwhile, what exactly would you find useful?

1. Chisel does more retries internally or with a bigger time budget or both. Should this be configurable?
2. Chisel allows you to change the mirror but uses a single URL to fetch the packages.
3. Chisel uses a list of mirrors.
4. Chisel respects the apt configuration.

Internally we think 1. and 2. are the most useful, while 3. and 4. would be nice but would both, bloat the tool, and introduce more issues like consistency across mirrors being hard to guarantee. I am curious if for you 1. and 2. are indeed enough for your use-case?

[dheeg]

For the problem we are currently working on, option 2. would be a fine solution. I already tried it by changing the constant, after compiling Chisel everything is fine.

[letFunny]

Yeah changing the URL is dead simple. The discussion we want to have internally is if we want this to be part of a greater set of configurable parameters (config file) or a one-off CLI option or something else.