Re: Register as an official mirror

[Wouter Verhelst <wouter@debian.org>]

Hi,

For future reference, there is a mailinglist specifically for mirror
maintainers. I've added it to Cc for this mail.

On Tue, Aug 28, 2018 at 06:38:56AM +0000, Riseops wrote:
> Good Day,
> 
> We would like to register as an official debian-cd mirror. http://
> mirror.rise.ph/debian-cd/

Please see the documentation on how to register at
https://www.debian.org/mirror/ftpmirror

> Do we have to use your ftpsync script?

In short: yes.

In order for apt not to get confused, it is necessary that mirrors order
their syncs in a particular way, so that new packages are added before
the index files are updated, and then old packages are deleted
afterwards. That way, users who run "apt update" in the middle of an
update of your mirror won't get 404 messages when they try to download a
package that exists in the index but not yet (or not anymore) in the
pool directory. Additionally, you need to ensure that metadata files
which are signed by other metadata files won't fail validation by apt
during "apt update".

It's theoretically possible to reimplement the algorithms which ftpsync
uses in your own code, but that just creates an extra maintenance burden
for you when all you really need to do is to copy the ftpsync script
from the /project/ftpsync directory and use it.

> Currently we're manually running an rsync job and running a post
> command `date -u > /srv/mirror/debian-cd/project/
> trace/mirror.rise.ph" afterwards. Please note that we are manually
> setting the tracefile to mirror.rise.ph as the host containing the
> fiels are on a different host.

Sure. Note that while ftpsync defaults to using $(hostname -f) as the
hostname for the trace file, you can override that default in
ftpsync.conf, the MIRRORNAME setting.

See "man 5 ftpsync" for the full details on that.

Also, note that trace files contain a lot more information than just the
date these days...

-- 
Could you people please use IRC like normal people?!?

  -- Amaya Rodrigo Sastre, trying to quiet down the buzz in the DebConf 2008
     Hacklab