FS#20517 - {mirror} Update for Dutch mirrors

Attached to Project: Arch Linux
Opened by Mark (voidzero) - Thursday, 19 August 2010, 12:51 GMT
Last edited by Dan McGee (toofishes) - Friday, 25 February 2011, 00:38 GMT
Task Type General Gripe
Category Mirrors
Status Closed
Assigned To Roman Kyrylych (Romashka)
Architecture All
Severity Medium
Priority Normal
Reported Version
Due in Version Undecided
Due Date Undecided
Percent Complete 100%
Votes 0
Private No

Details

Hello,

The mirrorlist currently holds two Dutch mirrors: nluug.nl and surfnet.nl. I have had a conversation with one of the nluug mirror admins. He told me that Surfnet has no machines of their own, they are the same as the nluug.nl machines. This is visible by doing a dns lookup:

% host ftp.surfnet.nl
ftp.surfnet.nl has address 192.87.102.42
ftp.surfnet.nl has address 192.87.102.43
ftp.surfnet.nl has IPv6 address 2001:610:1:80aa:192:87:102:43
ftp.surfnet.nl has IPv6 address 2001:610:1:80aa:192:87:102:42

% host ftp.nluug.nl
ftp.nluug.nl has address 192.87.102.43
ftp.nluug.nl has address 192.87.102.42
ftp.nluug.nl has IPv6 address 2001:610:1:80aa:192:87:102:42
ftp.nluug.nl has IPv6 address 2001:610:1:80aa:192:87:102:43

The NLUUG admin has told me that it's best to remove the surfnet.nl mirrors from the mirrorlist. It serves no extra use, so please go ahead and remove them.


-----
FYI #1: the NLUUG admin has changed his mirror from mirroring ibiblio to mirroring ftp.archlinux.org directly.
FYI #2: I am working on setting up a new mirror at a big Dutch ISP: XS4All. I will add a new task to bugspray when this mirror has been set up.
-----
This task depends upon

Closed by  Dan McGee (toofishes)
Friday, 25 February 2011, 00:38 GMT
Reason for closing:  Fixed
Comment by Roman Kyrylych (Romashka) - Thursday, 19 August 2010, 17:54 GMT
I guess it is safe to remove surfnet.nl from the list then.

Mirroring from ftp.archlinux.org? It doesn't have rsync.
And if you meant rsync.archlinux.org - mirroring from it is denied for non-tier1 mirrors.
See the wiki page [1] for the list of tier1 mirrors.

There is no contact email address for nluug.nl admin in our database and ftpmirror-beheer@surfnet.nl never responded.
If you know what email address I can use for contacting some admin - let me know.
Or tell the admins to go to the wiki page [1] and follow the steps to become a proper tier2 mirror.

[1] http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/DeveloperWiki:NewMirrors
Comment by Mark (voidzero) - Tuesday, 24 August 2010, 19:33 GMT
Hi Roman,

I have emailed the admin. So far I have gotten no response, but sometimes it can take a while. I'll give it some more time and I won't forget about this bug.
Comment by Mark (voidzero) - Thursday, 26 August 2010, 05:52 GMT
In the latest version nluug was removed and surfnet was kept. It should be the other way around :)
Comment by Roman Kyrylych (Romashka) - Thursday, 26 August 2010, 07:44 GMT
oops, my bad :)
I cannot find Arch mirror at nluug.nl,
so I'm completely removing surfnet from our db, and marking nluug.nl as inactive until it's fixed
Comment by Mark (voidzero) - Thursday, 26 August 2010, 07:49 GMT Comment by Roman Kyrylych (Romashka) - Thursday, 26 August 2010, 11:16 GMT
Thank you.
Fixed the URLs in our db and marked it active again.
Comment by Roman Kyrylych (Romashka) - Wednesday, 29 September 2010, 11:19 GMT
Still no response from nluug admin?
Comment by Mark (voidzero) - Thursday, 30 September 2010, 10:20 GMT
Still no response. I will email again.
Comment by Mark (voidzero) - Friday, 29 October 2010, 18:52 GMT
I have had some contact with the nluug admin. You can register me as a contact. I will relay the messages to the person who administers the nluug servers. It's the preferred way right now and when it changes we will follow the proper procedure. Add mark <at> voidzero <dot> net.
Comment by Roman Kyrylych (Romashka) - Thursday, 04 November 2010, 18:13 GMT
I made a note in the db about this.
Personally, I'm willing to remove a mirror that is impossible/hard to contact from the official list.
It is important to have a direct contact with admins of all mirrors.
Comment by Mark (voidzero) - Thursday, 04 November 2010, 18:52 GMT
Imho there are pros and cons to what you're saying. One one side I agree. On the other hand, why remove a perfectly sound mirror? Indeed, from Archlinux's perspective it's important to stay in contact with mirror providers. However, from the provider's side there might be much less of this importance, for example when it concerns huge mirror administrators like on nluug. From their side the procedure to add a site has to be simple and easy, and any broken mirror will just have to be repaired, mirrored from elsewhere (mirror.org), or removed.

If it's broken, yes, delete it. At least until we can see how it can be restored, a broken mirror does no one good. But if we on the other hand we would try to have an official ring of archlinux supporting mirrors then we might lose working mirrors that, after all, provide some heavy local backbone.

If security would be the issue (e.g. spoofed packages) then other avenues would prove to be more effective. For example, package signing.

My conclusion is that the possibility for a middle man to contact a huge mirror archives isn't a bad idea, at least not in this case.
Comment by Mark (voidzero) - Monday, 07 February 2011, 20:21 GMT
Suggestions:

* Read / respond to my last comment;
* Keep the nluug mirror;
* Close this bug.
Comment by Dan McGee (toofishes) - Friday, 25 February 2011, 00:38 GMT
We don't want middlemen, mirrors are enough hassle already and there is 0 need for any opacity in this process. If this mirror dies again, it will get deleted from our list.

Loading...