Re: anyone interested in loading a portable drive?

[Brian Inglis <Brian.Inglis@SystematicSw.ab.ca>]

On 2020-01-26 21:33, aimedtech wrote:
> Okay, this is a complaint.  I've spent the past few days trying to download 
> the Cygwin system and gotten nowhere. I've tried several download 
> environments, using different protocols, nothing works.
> 
> And this is beyond being a pain, this is getting to be a real problem for
> me. No, that's not right -- it is a problem for me, NOW.
> 
> I remember, I downloaded, installed it and used it, this was about a decade 
> ago. Then, the area for naming the machine download sites would fill in 
> automatically; Today, no. I chose a couple and tried them, one at a time.
> Neither worked
> 
> I'm not sure if this message is to just tell you that your install is very
> broken and goodbye or if I'm asking for help.
>
> I am willing to send someone a USB 1TB drive and pay $50 bucks to load it 
> and send it back. If that's what I do I want everything. The works.
This is an all-volunteer project and mirrors are donated by the server owners.

Weekends are busy times for backups and security upgrades on publicly accessible
free servers, and if there are problems, support may not be available until the
next work day, after serious production issues are dealt with.

Similarly for answers and support from here.

The world has changed and Cygwin has become larger in the last decade (148GB
according to the Mirrors page).

You *MUST* download the latest x86/_64 installer from the home page
setup-x86/_64.exe links to get the latest active mirrors and use the current key:

	https://cygwin.com/setup-x86_64.exe
	https://cygwin.com/setup-x86.exe
	
Selection from the latest active mirrors to use is easiest by browsing the
linked Mirror Sites page:

	https://cygwin.com/mirrors.html

and you should see if you can recognize nearby sites which are likely to have
big servers and fast pipes.

You may find your closest site(s) overloaded, slow, and connectivity
intermittent, depending on the site ownership, day of week, time of day, network
path to you, other users on the site and on your local ISP feeds.

Avoid evenings and weekends, when many others nearby are downloading the newest
Amazon Prime, Apple+. Disney+, Netflix, etc. series to binge watch, and your ISP
is also throttling retail customers, to free up bandwidth for their business
customers doing offsite streaming backups.

Searching for an unofficial mirror at a nearby local university or (Unix) User
Group publicly available on the internet may give you better results.

Sometimes the closest mirrors may not be the fastest or most reliable, and ftp
sites nowadays are slower, less available and reliable than http/https sites, as
web sites get the big bucks, servers, memory, and pipes, but ftp sites may be
kept around only as long as nothing goes wrong with their old server.

Ping, traceroute, simple adhoc bandwidth and throughput tests will give you an
idea of the best performance, and experience will tell you about reliability.

Start by downloading only the base packges or upgrading what you have installed,
and be patient during postinstall steps, as rebasing all the DLLs, and
rebuilding updated pages in the man DB, can take a while with large upgrades or
outdated installs.

-- 
Take care. Thanks, Brian Inglis, Calgary, Alberta, Canada

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too much technical detail. Reader discretion is advised.

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