Re: [PATCH] test: Remove unused distro images

[Stefano Brivio <sbrivio@redhat.com>]

On Mon, 8 Sep 2025 18:19:51 +1000
David Gibson <david@gibson.dropbear.id.au> wrote:

> On Mon, Sep 08, 2025 at 10:02:19AM +0200, Stefano Brivio wrote:
> > On Mon, 8 Sep 2025 17:09:57 +1000
> > David Gibson <david@gibson.dropbear.id.au> wrote:
> >   
> > > On Mon, Sep 08, 2025 at 02:09:21PM +0800, Yumei Huang wrote:  
> > > > Some of the download links are broken, and none of the images are
> > > > used in current tests. Removing them so it won't block make.
> > > > 
> > > > Signed-off-by: Yumei Huang <yuhuang@redhat.com>    
> > > 
> > > Ah, sorry.  I realised I forgot some information when I suggested you
> > > make this change.
> > > 
> > > Although we're not using these images at the moment, we hope to use
> > > them again some time in future.  For that reason it's useful to keep
> > > the information about what the images were and how they worked in
> > > place.
> > > 
> > > So, rather than removing this completely, it would be better to keep
> > > the {DEBIAN,...}_IMGS variables and the download targets, but just
> > > don't include them in DOWNLOAD_ASSETS for now.  That will make it
> > > easier to put a fixed version of this back when we're ready.  
> > 
> > My suggestion from a couple of days ago:
> > 
> >   https://archives.passt.top/passt-dev/20250820134427.6a16ad19@elisabeth/
> > 
> > was rather that we update the links. Not many of them are broken, and
> > it would be valuable to have test/distro working again. Is that
> > unfeasible for some other reason?  
> 
> Not in principle, I think.  It is, however, pretty miserable for me to
> test: even before the links broke it was achingly slow for me to
> download all the images in Australia.  Don't know what it's like in
> China.

I guess it's similar: if you have mirrors nearby, then it's fast,
otherwise it's slow.

I actually ran all this (without your changes to cache things, so
downloading every time) on a machine in Beijing a few years ago, and
most downloads were very fast (all the Debian ones at least), some
other ones (some of the old Fedora ones, I think) pretty slow.

> This was just the fastest way to stop this being a blocker for
> anyone new to the project.

Sure, that's the most important thing. We can proceed in two ways, I
guess:

1. we go ahead and apply this and make it my priority to fix the rest
   myself (old Fedora downloads are slow for me as well, but I don't
   care that much)

2. Yumei gives it a try with fixing download links, if it's doable from
   China, and after that (probably) broken tests. If it's not doable, 1.
   is absolutely fine!

...let me know if 2. might make sense.

-- 
Stefano