Re: mirrors, Debian http-redirector & derivatives

[Raphael Hertzog <hertzog@debian.org>]

Hi Paul,

On Tue, 12 May 2015, Paul Wise wrote:
> I note that surprisingly Kali seems to use mirrorbrain.
> Mati, has Kali packaged mirrorbrain or are you using a manual setup?

mirrorbrain provides Debian packages through OpenSuse Build System (OBS):
http://mirrorbrain.org/docs/installation/debian/

I wanted to integrate mirrorbrain into Debian and I tried to mentor
a new contributor on this project but he was not enough pro-active
and the process stalled multiple times.

It would be really nice to have this software into Debian.

> Have you found any problems with using it for serving apt repositories?

It works very well given that most files served by a Debian mirror
have a unique name. So you are always redirected to a mirror that has the
file that you requested.

The few problems I have encountered were mostly due repropro deleting
old packages immediately instead of keeping them around for 2-3 days until
all Packages file no longer reference such files.

That said, it would be better if mirrorbrain supported some more advanced
health check: http://mirrorbrain.org/issues/issue150

And also the cron jobs are very verbose as soon you have some
transient problems with some mirrors... with scans once per hour
it can quickly pollute your mailbox.

Cheers,
-- 
Raphaël Hertzog ◈ Debian Developer

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