Failure to download `nix-installer`

[shivaraj-bh]

Trying to install Upstream Nix with determinate installer fails with the following error:

curl -fsSL https://install.determinate.systems/nix | sh -s -- install
info: downloading installer
warn: curl: (28) Operation too slow. Less than 250000 bytes/sec transferred the last 15 seconds
curl: (28) Operation too slow. Less than 250000 bytes/sec transferred the last 15 seconds
curl: (28) Operation too slow. Less than 250000 bytes/sec transferred the last 15 seconds
curl: (28) Operation too slow. Less than 250000 bytes/sec transferred the last 15 seconds
error: command failed: downloader https://install.determinate.systems/nix/tag/v3.11.1/nix-installer-x86_64-linux /tmp/tmp.7UoSc4J3kN/nix-installer x86_64-linux

Fetching the nix-installer directly from the link in the error and then running it works as expected (though slow to download):

curl -L https://install.determinate.systems/nix/tag/v3.11.1/nix-installer-x86_64-linux -o nix-installer
chmod +x nix-installer
./nix-installer install

System info

• OS: Ubuntu x86_64-linux
• curl 8.5.0 (x86_64-pc-linux-gnu)

[grahamc]

Where did this execute, and what is your network speed like?

[shivaraj-bh]

Where did this execute

It was on a colleagues Ubuntu desktop, I was able to reproduce on my mac as well.

what is your network speed like?

I had suspected network speed to be the problem, but the download speed was well over 200 Mbps (both on my mac and the colleagues desktop).

Post that, I tried the workaround from the issue description and it worked.

[grahamc]

Hrm. How long did that take to fetch?

[shivaraj-bh]

Hrm. How long did that take to fetch?

I tried it again on the same network, took 8min 52 sec:

curl -L https://install.determinate.systems/nix/tag/v3.11.1/nix-installer-x86_64-linux -o nix-installer
  % Total    % Received % Xferd  Average Speed   Time    Time     Time  Current
                                 Dload  Upload   Total   Spent    Left  Speed
  0     0    0     0    0     0      0      0 --:--:-- --:--:-- --:--:--     0
100 66.6M  100 66.6M    0     0   128k      0  0:08:52  0:08:52 --:--:--  136k

speedtest-cli output at the same time:

<redacted>
Testing download speed................................................................................
Download: 353.11 Mbit/s
Testing upload speed......................................................................................................
Upload: 398.66 Mbit/s

[srid]

By the way, this is all from Bangalore network.

Here, in Quebec City, I have no problems with the speed.

[grahamc]

Hrm. I imagine there might be some issues with how we distribute it. We added this low speed timeout to help users that got stuck with a VERY slow backend, to cause it to reopen with a faster one.

How about we set the low speed timeout to 60,000 bytes per second? Is that sufficient buffer for you?

[shivaraj-bh]

Yes, the low speed timeout helps.

I manually changed the --speed-limit in the installer script and couldn't reproduce the error anymore

[grahamc]

@shivaraj-bh Cool. Can you try with 100000? 60000 is pretty slow, ideally we could make it 100k at least.

[shivaraj-bh]

Can you try with 100000?

@grahamc I can no longer reproduce with the existing limit 250000, so it is hard to tell. I guess we can close this issue for now and re-visit if it happens again.