bug#50918: "server is somewhat slow" error is more annoying than helpful

[Liliana Marie Prikler <liliana.prikler@gmail.com>]

Hi,

Am Donnerstag, den 30.09.2021, 15:17 +0000 schrieb raid5atemyhomework:
> So for the past several months I have been getting errors like these:
> 
> ```
> guix substitute: warning: while fetching 
> https://ci.guix.gnu.org/nar/lzip/k9wmrk5m91599lk8gd4rc7h4df642qw0-curl-7.74.0
> : server is somewhat slow
> guix substitute: warning: try `--no-substitutes' if the problem
> persists
> guix substitute: error: connect*: Connection timed out
> substitution of /gnu/store/k9wmrk5m91599lk8gd4rc7h4df642qw0-curl-
> 7.74.0 failed
> ```
> 
> 
> These errors are more annoying than helpful to me.  There's nothing I
> can do about the servers, and the ISP I have is the best I can get
> with my budget (I already have two ISPs, and the one I use for Guix
> is the one that is more reliable, believe me).
The warning and the error are not necessarily related.  You can get the
warning without the error, it's just there to tell you that fetching
data from the substitute server might be slower than building from
source if your CPU is particularly fast.

> At the least, there should be some way to downgrade this from a
> "connection timed out" error to just keep on keeping on.  Or at least
> to tell the tool to just keep retrying the download for some
> specified number of times before actually giving up (in practice 2 or
> 3 times is enough on my part of the Internet).
This issue has existed before the warning you mention.  Builds also
still fail if you e.g. get a TLS error partway (happens to me more
often than I'd like).  It is IIRC a very well-known bug, though on the
top of my head I can't give you a number.

Regards