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Issue migrated (2015-06-05) from old issue tracker http://mirrorbrain.org/issues/issue16

Title    mod_geoip too old on Debian and Ubuntu
 Priority   feature        Status     deferred
Superseder               Nosy List    poeml
Assigned To poeml         Keywords

msg38 (view) Author: poeml Date: 2009-10-26.19:33:03

I realised that this issue wasn't in the issue tracker yet, but only discussed
in private communication. I
put it here so it can be better tracked.

Symptom:

 error log is reporting 'could not resolve continent'

The problem is that mod_geoip is too old on Debian and Ubuntu, and it lacks the
functionality to yield
region data from lookups.

Excerpts from communication:

Okay, I almost expected that -- I was already digging in the back of my head,
what I remember about the old
mod_geoip version that Debian has. The problem with it is that at the time the
continent lookup wasn't
implemented. This was actually one of the reasons why I implemented the GeoIP
lookup in mod_mirrorbrain
itself in the beginning. Later, when mod_geoip became more powerful, I switched
to using it for the
purposes.

I probably should have chosen a different route -- I should have put the
country-continent mapping
statically right into mod_mirrorbrain, because then it would have this bit of
information, without being
bound to a newer version of mod_geoip. The "new" version of mod_geoip is already
two years old or so, but
the Debian package is very outdated unfortunately.

I think a fix could be either to implement the country-continent mapping inside
mod_mirrorbrain, or to
package the newer mod_geoip for Debian/Ubuntu and provide it via the openSUSE
build service similar to the
other stuff that's already there. (And we should work with Debian to update the
package; this was in fact
one reason why I considered becoming a real Debian contributor)

I'm not sure right now though whether the continent lookup makes mod_mirrorbrain
fail completely, or if it
is maybe still able to pick mirrors based on country? Do you see it doing random
choices, or does it pick
mirrors by country?

I see it just sets continent_code = "--" when that lookup fails, so if the
country of a client is the same
as the country of a mirror, it should redirect to that. If not, it'll use a
random mirror; yes, that's what
probably happens.

(You could set "MirrorBrainDebug yes" in the Apache config to see a lot of
detail.)

I'm sorry! But with newer mod_geoip (and if that fails, also newer libgeoip)
this can be resolved.

Peter

Good morning,

I debianized my apache2-mod_geoip package now, and a Debian/Ubuntu libapache2-
mod-geoip package will become
available in the repositories later today; that should fix the issue.

The GeoIP library itself is version 1.4.4 which should be new enough.

Peter

Thus, this issue is "solved" by providing the updated mod_geoip by us for
installation through the openSUSE
buildservice for Debian and Ubuntu.

For the record, another possible solution would be to

• add a static country/region table to mod_mirrorbrain so it could do the
  (admittedly very simple) lookup
  itself
• update the "real" Debian package

msg39 (view) Author: poeml Date: 2009-10-26.19:33:52

I'm setting the issue to "fixed".

msg65 (view) Author: poeml Date: 2009-11-18.08:58:37

I opened a bug upstream: http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=556904

msg183 (view) Author: poeml Date: 2010-04-23.03:05:09

No news from Debian upstream.

msg191 (view) Author: poeml Date: 2010-05-21.07:27:55

I received mail today that the module has been updated in Debian, which closes:

http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=400980
http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=556904

msg223 (view) Author: poeml Date: 2010-09-06.00:09:14

Action item: check which Debian/Ubuntu versions already benefitted from the
update, and which versions still need a backport.

msg296 (view) Author: poeml Date: 2010-09-26.12:06:17

I just checked on Ubuntu Lucid (10.04), and mod_geoip still is at 1.1.8, while we
provide 1.2.5.

History
         Date         User  Action             Args
2010-09-26 12:06:17 poeml set    messages: + msg296
2010-09-06 00:09:14 poeml set    messages: + msg223
2010-05-21 07:27:56 poeml set    messages: + msg191
2010-04-23 03:05:19 poeml set    status: chatting -> deferred
2010-04-23 03:05:09 poeml set    messages: + msg183
2009-12-07 03:17:26 poeml set    priority: bug -> feature
2009-11-18 08:58:38 poeml set    status: resolved -> chatting
                                   messages: + msg65
2009-10-26 19:33:52 poeml set    status: unread -> resolved
                                   messages: + msg39
2009-10-26 19:33:03 poeml create

(end of migrated issue)