Please Use the Mirrors!

[Eric Rostetter]

Quoting Bret Hughes <bhughes at elevating.com>:

> Perhaps something on the index page of download.fedoralegacy.org that
> says "Please use the mirrors" and give some links to them.  Right now
> there is no indication that you do not want folks to use the site.

I've never added anything to the download page for two reasons:

1) I never thought of it.
2) Everytime the bandwidth issue comes up I'm told the new site will
    be up "in a matter of days" so there seems no point.

Since the "matter of days" has been more like months, in retrospect it
would have been a good idea.

So, is the new server (I know it is in testing now) really going to be
up in a matter of days?  Or is it going to be longer so we really need
to change the download pages to show the mirrors instead?  Or will
the new machine not really solve the problem, and we need to push the
mirrors harder anyway?

> Also on fedoralegacy.org/download/  change the link under "Manually
> downloading specific packages" to point to the mirrors page rather than
> download.fedoralegacy.org.

I think the bigger problem is the apt/yum users.  In particular because
many of them run daily automatic updates, etc.  I doubt the people downloading
individual packages are the problem. (Though maybe web robots are following
the links, and could be a source of the problem).

> Seems to me that rsync would help people create local repositories for
> their company's use.  Even if they have only 3 or four machines, it has
> to be made easy for them to create the repo.

Yes, I agree.  I currently mirror update sites to my local machine, and
all my other local machines update from there.  So allowing me to rsync once
a day will save you having to provide yum/apt access to about 100 machines
all at once (when I do my mass updates of about 100 machines at a time).
Would seem to be a good tradeoff.

But I also can't open this to everyone.  It is open to my 1200 users here,
and that's all I can support.

> I don't have the bandwidth to be a true mirror site but I could save
> some band width for you with local mirrored trees.  This is going to be
> much more of an issue now that RHL 9 is there too.

I agree 100%.  Not that I have a solution, but I agree.

It is not just a bandwidth saving for me either.  When a machine here gets
hacked, infected by a virus, trojaned, etc. we cut off their access at the
border until they are cleaned and patched.  Since their access to the
internet is cut, they can't get updates from outside.  So I need that local
mirror (for the various OS versions) to provide updates to them.

I'd love to see a way for site-specific mirrors to be allowed.  Though
perhaps we can just mirror from a mirror rather than the main server.

> Bret

--
Eric Rostetter