Re: GNU mirror going away

[Steven Pritchard <steve@silug.org>]

On Thu, Dec 11, 2003 at 09:12:50PM +0000, mike808@users.sourceforge.net wrote:
> > You should note that I have gone to considerable personal expense to
> > move my *mirror* server to its own dedicated box recently, largely due
> > to security concerns.
> 
> That was your choice. Why should I note it?

My point was that I've gone to this much trouble over a simple mirror
server.  They're supposed to be the master server for GNU, and they
can't pull off an isolated sandbox for rsync if they're that worried
about it?

> And nobody asked you to bear that expense on your own.

The money I've put into hardware is pretty trivial compared to how
much we invest in bandwidth every month.

> Now, that said, if you want to pass the hat to replace that RAID
> heater unit in your basement, let us know what you're thinking about
> doing, and I'll see what help I can get you on making it happen. (i.e.
> a switch from the SCSI RAID of 6 50GB disks (half operational, right?)
> to an IDE RAID of fewer 250GB disks.)

The whole thing is going now.  (Thanks to the hardware changes, extra
cables, etc.)  The mirror server itself uses two disks (mirrored for
the OS install), and the rest is one big RAID 5.

Filesystem            Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/md2              413G  241G  172G  59% /home/ftp/mirrors

> > IF that site is still current, I HIGHLY doubt it would be a good site
> > to mirror from if rsync is disabled on ftp.gnu.org.
> 
> You don't understand -- I'm suggesting you RSYNC from ANL. How they get their 
> mirror is irrelevant. Maybe they get their mirror via FTP. They just make it
> available via HTTP, FTP, and rsync. And a mirror is a mirror. Why do you doubt
> their rsync feed is somehow "less" of a mirror than an FTP or HTTP one? And
> there is NO basis for the "IF that site is current" comment. Why all the FUD?

No, *you* don't understand.

Have you ever mirrored a site via FTP?  There are absolutely no
guarantees that your copy of the data even remotely resembles what is
on the server.  That's one of the reasons why rsync is essential if
you want a real mirror.

Mirroring via HTTP is only slightly more reliable, and that's only
because apache isn't as buggy as the million different FTP servers out
there, but it is still a hack.  (Parsing HTML for a file list is a
little silly, don't you think?)

Besides that, I'd be real surprised if most of the other GNU mirrors
aren't exactly where I'm at...  Suddenly cut off, without a reliable
way to mirror.  ANL may have started using an unreliable method, but
most likely their cron job is just failing twice daily just like mine
was.

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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