Re: ftp.uk.debian.org and backports

[Mike Crowe <mac@mcrowe.com>]

On Sat, Dec 10, 2011 at 01:16:54AM +0100, Peter Palfrader wrote:
> On Fri, 09 Dec 2011, Philip Hands wrote:
> 
> > > If this situation is temporary would it be possible to change the
> > > ftp.uk.debian.org CNAME to point to something that provides backports
> > > and volatile too?
> > 
> > On this occasion it's probably not worth the trouble, but should perhaps
> > be taken into account next time my disks play up.
> 
> I don't think we will.  The only thing guaranteed to be present on
> ftp.*.debian.org is the debian archive in /debian.

I expected this response which is why I consulted
http://backports-master.debian.org/Mirrors/ and
http://www.debian.org/volatile/volatile-mirrors before
posting. Perhaps such mirror lists should not contain
ftp.CC.debian.org by that name if the CNAME could change to point to a
host that does not mirror these other archives?
 
> I really wished we had a policy that asked operators of ftp.*.d.o hosts
> to not expose anything else on that particular vhost, and use other
> hostnames for other repositories, but I don't think we do.

I think that just the second part of that would help. Providing
{backports,volatile}.CC.debian.org CNAMES would at least make it clear
what the correct host names to specify are even if I could get away
with using the wrong ones by mistake. At the moment it appears the
only way to avoid things breaking when CNAMEs change is to ignore
country mirrors altogether.

Thanks.

Mike.