InstantMirror-0.2 Release

[Ed Swierk]

On 12/4/07, chasd <chasd at silveroaks.com> wrote:
> If it was expected that InstantMirror was to be very popular, or
> there was a large number of other packages that would make use of
> <VirtualHost> directives, it might make sense to modify the default
> apache configuration to be more "virtual host friendly." As it
> stands, I think some prudent suggestions in the provided
> InstantMirror.conf file ( and perhaps renaming it ) is the best plan.

Actually InstantMirror should work just fine in a simple
non-VirtualHost configuration, so perhaps the default Apache
configuration file can leave out the VirtualHost directives and we can
bundle the fancier VirtualHost configuration as an example in the docs
directory.

> Anyway, I was able to test my suggestions on two different servers
> with two different sets of configuration files in conf.d, and my
> recommendations seem to work well in both cases. I guess that means
> this package is thoroughly tested ;)

Well, Warren has done an excellent job finding stupid bugs in my
original implementation.

> If I could make one other suggestion about InstantMirror, it would be
> to include a sample.repo file in /usr/share/doc/InstantMirror-x/ or
> throw it into /etc/yum.repos.d/ with enabled=0.

Good idea.

> BTW, InstantMirror is much simpler, lighter weight and easier to use
> than WSUS. Although WSUS has other abilities, InstantMirror has a
> good 50% of the functionality of WSUS. This package may seem
> innocuous, if you mentioned WSUS in the same breath as InstantMirror,
> it might warrant a mention as a feature, at least targeted at some
> new-to-Linux admins.

I have no idea what WSUS does but my guess is the 80/20 rule applies.
Still, the fact that a useful admin tool can be implemented in less
than 100 lines of Python demonstrates the excellent design of Apache,
mod_python and Python.

--Ed