Debian mirrors - updates
Hello,
It's been six months since the release of Debian 4.0 (etch) and my last post,
so it's a good time for a bit of an update.
The main debian/ archive is reaching new records in size - it's now 290 GB,
and it keeps on growing.[1] If your disks or array sizes are nearing the
limits, it would be a good time to upgrade. When the oldstable distribution
is removed, some space will be cleared up, but that won't happen for some
time yet, and by the time it does, chances are that growth in unstable will
already have compensated for it. :)
Since April, we've added some 80 mirror sites and removed 13 from the list[2],
if I counted that right, so the trend is still rather positive, even though
we still sometimes have mirrors disappear. :/ If you know of any errors or
omissions in the mirror list, please don't hesitate to let us know.
The submission web page[3] should work fairly reliably these days, and it
also gives one the option to specify whether IPv6 is available - if you
introduced that since your last submission, feel free to post an updated
submission.
If for any reason you don't get a fast reply when you send mail to
mirrors@debian.org, do not despair, just send us a reminder. Over the last
few months, Bernhard Stoeckner, Simon Paillard and myself have managed to
catch up with the entire mirrors@d.o backlog; if we missed something,
send us e-mail.
Regarding official mirrors[4] - in June we introduced one more official site,
ftp.pt.debian.org, and these days we're preparing to re-introduce
ftp.ca.debian.org. We've also fixed www.cn.debian.org, and the US rotations
ftp/http.us.d.o are also less often broken these days (although there's
still a fair bit of work to be done on that front), and several sites have
recently had their upstream source upgraded to push-mirroring[5], and/or
scripts upgraded so that they're not broken during updates[6].
Unfortunately, then there's also cases like ftp.hk.debian.org and
ftp.ee.debian.org, whose maintainers we don't seem to be able to contact -
if you know how to reach them, let us know at mirrors@debian.org.
In general, we will appreciate it if people notify us when they change their
mirror contact information, so that we don't have to go chasing people all
around the globe...
Last but not least, here are some reminders about old changes that still
didn't propagate fully through the mirror hierarchy:
* debian-non-US has been obsolete since Debian 3.1, which was in 2005 - if
you don't carry the old release archive and don't have local users who
can't update their sources.list - please remove it completely, it's not
useful any more.
* To avoid having your mirror break for the users during its updates
because it mirrors Packages files before all the .deb files are in place,
please use an up-to-date version of our trusty old anonftpsync script[7]
which was updated for this in 2005.
* The discussion list for mirror issues is debian-mirrors@lists.d.o
For more information see http://lists.debian.org/debian-mirrors/
Thanks for mirroring Debian. :)
--
Josip Rodin
mirrors@debian.org
[1] The page at http://www.debian.org/mirror/size helps explain how.
[2] Condensed list at: http://www.debian.org/mirror/list
Full information list at: http://www.debian.org/mirror/list-full
[3] Mirror submission/update web page: http://www.debian.org/mirror/submit
[4] More information: http://www.debian.org/mirror/official
[5] More information: http://www.debian.org/mirror/push_mirroring
[6] The infamous bug #6786 in the Debian BTS, describing how users get
file-not-found errors when trying to fetch from mirrors that are in
process of updating.
[7] Current version at: http://www.debian.org/mirror/anonftpsync
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