Re: Updating Ports on 15.0-RELEASE-p5

On 2026-04-22 14:45:25 (+0800), Washington Odhiambo wrote:
> On Wed, Apr 22, 2026 at 8:58 AM Philip Paeps <philip@freebsd.org> 
> wrote:
>> I just noticed this message from a couple of weeks ago.  The problem 
>> might have been transient but ...
>>
>> On 2026-04-04 19:50:48 (+0800), Washington Odhiambo wrote:
>>> What's going on here?
>>
>> It looks like you're getting timeouts because you're talking to a 
>> pkg.FreeBSD.org mirror very far from where you are.
>>
>>> pkg: Failed to fetch
>>> https://pkg.FreeBSD.org/FreeBSD:15:amd64/latest/meta.conf: Timeout 
>>> was reached
>>>
>>> [...]
>>>
>>> root@gw:/home/wash # ping pkg.FreeBSD.org
>>> PING pkgmir.geo.FreeBSD.org (96.47.72.71): 56 data bytes
>>> 64 bytes from 96.47.72.71: icmp_seq=0 ttl=52 time=249.443 ms
>>> 64 bytes from 96.47.72.71: icmp_seq=1 ttl=52 time=248.192 ms
>>> ^C
>>> --- pkgmir.geo.FreeBSD.org ping statistics ---
>>> 2 packets transmitted, 2 packets received, 0.0% packet loss
>>> round-trip min/avg/max/stddev = 248.192/248.817/249.443/0.625 ms
>>> root@gw:/home/wash # uname -a
>>> FreeBSD gw.wash.lan 15.0-RELEASE-p5 FreeBSD 15.0-RELEASE-p5
>>> releng/15.0-n281018-0730d5233286 GENERIC amd64
>>> root@gw:/home/wash #
>>
>> It's very odd to see you being sent all the way to New Jersey.  Our 
>> GeoDNS should be sending you to Fastly infrastructure in Cape Town or 
>> our mirror in Johannesburg.  Both are still a long way away but 70ms 
>> is a lot better than 250ms!
>>
>> Could you tell me your source IP address please?  I can optimise the 
>> routing.
>
> I *was* technically in New Jersey as my VM was routed via my VPN 
> tunnel.
> I have since routed the VM via my WAN, but the issue still persists:
>
> root@gw:/home/wash # !trace
> traceroute pkg.FreeBSD.org
> traceroute to pkgmir.geo.FreeBSD.org (96.47.72.71), 64 hops max, 40 
> byte
> packets
>  1  192.168.69.1 (192.168.69.1)  0.430 ms  0.428 ms  0.361 ms
>  2  192.168.1.1 (192.168.1.1)  1.037 ms  0.922 ms  1.058 ms
>  3  192.168.222.1 (192.168.222.1)  2.406 ms  2.685 ms  2.354 ms
>  4  * * 41.215.131.9 (41.215.131.9)  3.135 ms

This hop is in Nairobi and our GeoDNS would send you to somewhere 
nearby.  Are you perhaps using a DNS server far away, or one that strips 
ECS information?  E.g. 9.9.9.9 will do this - 9.9.9.11 will work much 
better.

See https://quad9.net/service/service-addresses-and-features/#ecssec

Or is your origin network (masked by the NAT hops) in another netblock 
that isn't geolocated to Kenya?

What does this tell you?

% curl http://ip.wtf

> 18  pkg0.nyi.freebsd.org (96.47.72.71)  251.058 ms  251.621 ms  
> 246.661 ms
> root@gw:/home/wash #
> root@gw:/home/wash # pkg update
> Updating FreeBSD-ports repository catalogue...
> pkg: Failed to fetch
> https://pkg.FreeBSD.org/FreeBSD:15:amd64/latest/meta.conf: Timeout was
> reached
> pkg: Failed to fetch

pkg should be robust with high latency but there are a lot of hops on 
the path.  And who knows what those first couple of hops are doing. :)

For what it's worth, from WaveX in Nairobi I get sent to Fastly in Cape 
Town.

Philip