[CentOS-mirror] Thoughts on DVD images

Mon May 24 19:23:50 UTC 2010
David Richardson <david.richardson at utah.edu>

On Wed, 19 May 2010, Karanbir Singh wrote:

> On 05/19/2010 06:08 PM, Jonathan Thurman wrote:
>>
>> I don't think that the msync pool should be wide open for anyone to 
>> access.  Those that are hosting public mirrors of content should have a 
>> pool that they can sync to that is restricted, or at least have 
>> priority over unknown users.  Otherwise it could be more difficult for 
>> the public mirror system to stay up to date.
>
> Yeah, thats the main thing - being able to get the rsync tree's out to 
> the public mirrors asap, while still having enough resources within 
> .centos.org.
>
> So here is a question for you - as a mirror admin, would you host an 
> rsync target that msync.c.o could push into ? It could be ither based on 
> a user/pass acl or a key. And we would give you a list of ip's that will 
> push to your machine.


I think closing the msync machines (tier 0, in Fedora-speak) to the 
general public (at least for rsync) is probably a good idea. It would 
allow more bandwidth and connections to be used by public tier-1s. People 
wanting to create a new tier-1 can get their initial sync from another 
tier-1.

I have reservations about requiring push mirroring. The main advantage I 
see with push is that an rsync is only started when there is new content. 
It would reduce the load on the tier-0s when there is no new data.

I see two downsides, however. First, I can't coordinate when my server 
syncs from different projects. Currently, I know that (for example) CentOS 
and Fedora won't try to update at the same time, because I control when 
those syncs start. I lose that with push.

The second concern is the security aspect. To allow push, I have to open 
ssh to machines outside my network and outside my control. I don't know 
how happy my security folks will be with that.

I think it would be better to make push mirroring an option, rather than a 
requirement.

DR

-- 
David Richardson <david.richardson at utah.edu>
"There are two kinds of statistics:
the kind you look up and the kind you make up."
-- Archie Goodwin, Death of a Doxy