[Bug 291748] Re: apt-cacher continues to download index files even if disk is full, wasting bandwidth

[Etienne Goyer]

Tested on Jaunty with apt-cacher version 1.6.7ubuntu2, and the behavior
is more or less the same.

Basically, when a client request an index file, apt-cacher will start to
download it, and pass it through to the client as it trickle in.
Eventually, it will fail to write to disk and close the connection to
the client abruptly.  apt on the client will retry the download
indefinitely.

The problem is really two-fold.

On one hand, apt-cacher should indeed handle running out of disk space
gracefully.  That would require non-trivial code change to apt-cacher.
It could, for example, refuse to download a file if there is less than a
certain amount of space left on the file system its cache is stored on,
and return HTTP 500 Internal Error.

On the other hand, the problem is exacerbated by apt on the client
retrying the download forever.  There is no way to change this behavior
(see Debian bug #119544, and LP #310262).  If apt could be configured to
limit the number of time it retries fetching an index file, the problem
would at least be mitigated.

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apt-cacher continues to download index files even if disk is full, wasting bandwidth
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/291748
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