Re: Debian i386 mirror
Olaf Meeuwissen <olaf@epkowa.co.jp> writes:
> "Gary Hennigan" <glhenni@sandia.gov> writes:
>
> > I only mirror the 386 portions of potato, US and non-US, and my
> > archive is about 2G.
>
> I guess you don't do the sources then.
Nope. Just the binary *.deb files and only for 386.
> > I had a major problem setting up a potato mirror using any type of
> > ftp-mirroring utility (like "mirror"). When I first started there were
> > a lot of links in potato to slink and the ftp server on most of the
> > debian mirror sites refused to flatten these symbolic links. If I had
> > continued trying to use "mirror" I would've had to copy both potato
> > and slink, both binary-all and binary-i386, in order to have a
> > functional mirror.
> >
> > Instead I started using a http mirroring utility. I use w3mir but
> > there are quite a few around that will do the job. The advantage is
> > that there aren't any symbolic links and I can mirror just the
> > binary-i386 directory structure and not worry about.
>
> Mirroring both binary-all and binary-i386 is no problem, is it? You
> now have everything that's in binary-all in binary-i386 anyway. The
> symlinks to slink might be more of a problem. What are you going to
> do when you decide you want to mirror woody?
Mirroring both binary-all and binary-i386 isn't really a problem, it's
just unecessary for a one-version, one-architecture mirror. Before
potato that's how I mirrored slink. But slink didn't have any
connections to other distributions. When I first started mirroring
potato it was heavily connected to slink with symlinks from
potato/*/binary-i386/ -> potato/*/binary-all and then a mess of links
from there to slink/*/binary-i386 and slink/*/binary-all. It would've
been a mess to try and get a one-architecture/one-distribution mirror
out of it. I imagine the situation between potato and woody is
analagous now, with lots of stuff in woody linked to potato.
Around that same time something happened to all the major mirror sites
as well and they quit allowing "ls -lLRat" to flatten symlinks. So, if
you wanted a mirror via ftp then you were almost forced to get potato
and slink with both binary-i386 & binary-all.
As to what happens if I want to add another distribution, I
won't. This is a private mirror for myself and the few folks here also
running Debian. It's behind a firewall and not accessible to the
general public. When I feel woody is stable enough for daily use I'll
quit mirroring potato and switch to woody. Anyone here wishing to stay
with potato will just have to change their apt sources.list file to
point to a standard mirror.
> In the (unlikely) case you want to add an architecture to your mirror
> you might want to consider mirroring both binary-all and binary-i386.
> If your mirroring tool (or proxy!) flattens symlinks for you (even if
> you really don't want it to), first do binary-all, then create links
> for each architecture to binary-all and finally mirror architectures
> you want. The links are easily created with perl like so (please be
> nice, it's my first perl program :-):
[snip perl]
> > I imagine most, if not all the links from potato to slink are gone
> > now, but if you, for example, wanted to mirror just woody I suspect
> > you'd be in the same situation, ie., having to ftp mirror both woody
> > and potato, with the binary-i386 and binary-all subdirectories. Plus
> > http has it's other advantages like still being easily accessible for
> > those of us behind firewalls.
>
> I just wished my http and ftp proxies didn't insist on pretty printing
> directory listings. All info about symlinks are gone, plus sizes are
> in kb and times in hh:mm:ss. Apart from all the html yuck, that is!
> This wrecks havoc with just about any mirroring tool I've looked at.
Well, I've had good luck as far as keeping the mirror up to date. Our
proxy servers reliability is another matter. Always seems to die about
3/4 of the way through, when I'm doing a large mirror. End up having
to do part of the mirror manually, but it works and it makes it easy
for me to take a copy home and upgrade my home systems, as opposed to
trying it over a 49k modem line.
Gary
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