up2date on Red Hat 7.3

[mpplf2003]

I am learning to run a web server at home, using Red Hat 7.3 at present - a noticable slow down when I accessed mail and browser led me to try out up2date thinking that X needed an update and the like - I simply ran up2date withoug unticking any rpms and the update has been running for a week now - the connection to the server is mostly just inder 1K on average I think - I imaging it could well take this long to sort the update out since I did install a lot of rpms originally - but I was just wanting to ckeck on anyone elses similar experience or knowledge re how long it should go on - the update progress window is not refreshing so I cannot see any info re the progress, but I was able to look at the up2date log a couple of days ago, and as far as I can tell the update is functioning, apparently carrying out an authentification every 4 hours as it chunters on - the drive light is merrily running - can anyone cofirm that I should not worry about the time it is taking? Thanks.

[majorwoo]

its taking a week? and it's running at 1k - that is an awful long time, but there have been several large updates in there - new kdebase files, new kernel, kernel source if you installed everything

if you are only getting 1k i suppose it i spossible that it is real, i just cant believe redhat hasnt dosconnected you after 1 week, or your ISP hasn't dropped your connection

[mpplf2003]

I am glad that RedHat have not dropped the connection - maybe their info confirms to them that the update is not finished re their record of what is to be updated - as for my ISP, I have a cable connection to the 7/24 rule is in place thank goodness! I imagine that as my registration with RedHat is not a professional one, that I do not get priority with the bandwidth from their servers, and their servers are no doubt very busy all the time - maybe next time I want such a big update, I should go to a mirror site and do a download for manual update install.

Thanks for your response.

[majorwoo]

you have a cable modem and you are getting 1k/sec from redhat? That's nuts! I get (usually) around 200k/sec from redhat

try testing your cable modem speed

http://www.dslreports.com/stest

[genlee]

Or uncap your cable modem

[mpplf2003]

I ran one test through the web site that majorwoo suggested with these results:

2003-01-18 18:33:35 EST: 120 / 71
Your download speed : 120693 bps, or 120 kbps.
A 14.7 KB/sec transfer rate.
Your upload speed : 71428 bps, or 71 kbps.
Your connection hardly qualified as broadband, at least in that test

I am paying for 128k cable connection (download), so I guess that 120 is fair enough from the test - I am thinking that the slowness of the activity must be due to what is having to be done to update all the packages on the disk - there might be a lot of shuffling going on when I am updating a whole distribution such as I installed last year??

At the moment, the server is not usable as the screen is not redrawing, but I am able to use the ip forwarding through it for doing this mail and receiving web pages and net radio. I am hoping that as soon as the download stops that the system will show some signs that it is still operational. Earlier today, the screen went down to just the background graphic, and now it is displaying the blank windows where the up2date windows are, and two more blank windows where I had the ethernet monitors open to watch the traffic through the ports concerned - so things are happening albeit so slowly as pereived from the outside!

[genlee]

You really need to uncap your modem

[mpplf2003]

At this point, I have to admit, that I do not know how to uncap a modem - the cable modem I have is one provided by the ISP and all I know how to do with it is to turn it on or off - if uncapping the modem is a software action, then I would like to know how to do that, but could not do it till the current update is finished as far as I can tell - it would seem that I should have run up2date preferably from a terminal log in rather than from the KDE, however as far as I know I cannot do anything about that now this time round - thanks for your reply.

[Dolda2000]

I believe genlee was referring to removing the cover on your modem because it might be overheating (I'm guessing he has some experience with that himself?)
Anyway, I don't think that's the thing, since your modem apparently was able to do 120 kbps in the test. I think there was a reason for that smiley.

[mpplf2003]

Thanks for that advice - I shall just leave the machine running and wait , I think - if there is a lot of disk defrag type activity going on with the update - since the update is (my mistake probably), everything - then perhaps it could take a while -

does anyone know what would happen if it went on so long that I decided to try <ctrl><alt><backspace> to get out of the process? would the system then be messed up completely? I am thinking it would as something important might be in the middle of an update write etc.