Re: GNU mirror going away

[Steven Pritchard <steve@silug.org>]

On Fri, Dec 12, 2003 at 12:11:40AM +0000, mike808@users.sourceforge.net wrote:
> AFAIK, SILUG is listed as an "official" mirror for Red Hat only.

And Debian, Qt (ftp.trolltech.com), ALSA (ftp.alsa-project.org), WBEL
(whiteboxlinux.org), CPAN, maybe others.  Plus ours is the master
download server for a couple of minor projects.

And actually, we're "unlisted" with Red Hat, just due to the insane
amount of bandwidth being a listed official mirror generates.

> And for all you or I know, who knows where the SILUG mirrors actually
> originate from or on what schedule. At least ANL discloses this.

In many cases it is fairly obvious.  If it isn't, I'm happy to burden
anyone with as much information as they ask for.

> For example, I don't think Steve ever bothered to tell anyone that the Mozilla
> mirrors were offline

http://www.silug.org/lists/silug-discuss/200309/msg00079.html
http://www.luci.org/luci-discuss/200309/msg00042.html

> Or are you trying to say something about the system administrators at
> the Argonne National Lab, who are in charge of research for nuk-u-lar
> stuff (they don't say if they only work on civilian projects)? You
> think they're putting in those NSA backdoors into the kernel DRM? :=)

Servers get broken into.  It happens.  This has nothing to do with the
server admins, good or bad.  But I don't control their boxes, so I try
to limit the number of systems I have to rely on between here and the
original source.  Some times I have no choice but to go through an
intermediate server, and there's nothing I can do about it.  So be it.

> And since SuSE doesn't offer rsync, and ANL does, and Steve insists on
> rsync, I don't see what the big deal is over not doing it. Other than
> Steve's ignorance of ANL and his own FUD. And maybe some laziness,
> since he is a Perl programmer after all. :=)

But SuSE does offer rsync.  You just have to be allowed in.  (Just
like Red Hat and others.)  So I emailed the appropriate contact today.

> Steve has had long-standing requests specifically for a SuSE mirror by
> quite a few members of the regional communities. His refusals to put
> up a mirror by direct request from the community he serves are
> sounding less like reasons, and more like excuses. And it saddens me
> for these recent events to lead me to think that of Steve.
> 
> I hope he will reconsider establishing a SuSE mirror from ANL.

Uh-huh.  "I want you to spend your time and bandwidth on something,
but I'm not willing to help or accept your judgement."

I have been asked for a SuSE mirror by 3, maybe 4 people total at one
point or another.  I seem to recall that Gary actually tried to get
someone at SuSE to give me rsync access, but that never went anywhere.
So I've tried again (and said so in my last mail), and yet you still
question my motivations?

You are more than welcome to spend your own money on bandwidth and
servers, and waste a few hours each week on care & feeding, if you
think you can do a better job.  And just look at the reward you get
for all your trouble.  :-/

Steve
-- 
steve@silug.org           | Southern Illinois Linux Users Group
(618)398-7360             | See web site for meeting details.
Steven Pritchard          | http://www.silug.org/

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