Mirror

The Computer Science Club runs a public mirror (mirror.csclub.uwaterloo.ca) on potassium-benzoate.

We are listed on the ResNet "don't count" list, so downloading from our mirror will not count against one's ResNet quota.

Software Mirrored

A list of current archives (and their respective disk usage) is listed on our mirror's homepage at mirror.csclub.uwaterloo.ca.

Mirroring Requests

Requests to mirror a particular distribution or archive should be made to syscom@csclub.uwaterloo.ca.

Implementation Details

Syncing

Storage

All of our projects are stored on one of two software RAID 6 arrays.

• /mirror/root/.mirror-importantfs
  • 8 2TB drives plus 2 additional hot spare drives
• /mirror/root/.mirror-largefs
  • 7 4TB drives plus 2 additional hot spare drives

All projects listed under /mirror/root are a symlink to one of the two arrays.

Merlin

The synchronization process is run by a Python script called "merlin", written by a2brenna. The script is stored in ~mirror/merlin.

The list of repositories and their configuration (synch frequency, location, etc.) is configured in merlin.py.

To view the sync status, execute ~mirror/merlin/arthur.py status. To force the sync of a project, execute ~mirror/merlin/arthur.py sync:PROJECT_NAME.

Sync Scripts

Our collection of synchronization scripts are located in ~mirror/bin. They currently include:

• csc-sync-apache
• csc-sync-debian
• csc-sync-debian-cd
• csc-sync-gentoo
• csc-sync-ssh
• csc-sync-standard

Most of these scripts take the following parameters:

local_dir rsync_host rsync_dir

HTTP(s)

We use nginx as our webserver.

Index

An index of the archives we mirror is available at mirror.csclub.uwaterloo.ca.

As of Winter 2010, it is now generated by a Python script in ~mirror/mirror-index.

~mirror/mirror-index/make-index is scheduled in /etc/cron.d/csc-mirror to be run at 5:40am on the 14th and 28th of each month. The script can be run manually when needed (for example, when the archive list is updated) by running:

sudo -u mirror /home/mirror/mirror-index/make-index.py

This causes an instance of du which computes the size of each directory. This list is then sorted alphabetically by directory name and returned to the Python script. If any errors occur during this process, the script conservatively chooses to exit rather than risk generating an index file that is incorrect.

make-index.py is configured by means of a YAML file, config.yaml, in the same directory. Its format is as follows:

docroot: /mirror/root
duflags: --human-readable --max-depth=1
output: /mirror/root/index.html

exclude:
   - include
   - lost+found
   - pub
# (...)

directories:
  apache:
    site: apache.org
    url: http://www.apache.org/

  archlinux:
    site: archlinux.org
    url: http://www.archlinux.org/

# (...)

The docroot is the directory which is to be scanned; this will probably always be the mirror root from which Apache serves. duflags specifies the flags to be passed to du. This is here so that it's easy to find and alter. For instance, we could change --human-readable to --si if we ever decided that, like hard disk manufacturers, we want sizes to appear larger than they are. output defines the file to which the generated index will be written.

exclude specifies the list of directories which will not be included in the generated index page (since, by default, all folders are included in the generated index page).

Finally, directories specifies the list of directories to be listed. The format is fairly straightforward: simply name the directory and provide a site (the display name in the "Project Site" column) and URL. One caveat here is that YAML does not allow tabs for whitespace. Indent with two spaces to remain consistent with the existing file format, please. Also note that the directory name is case-sensitive, as is always the case on Unix.

Finally, the HTML index file is generated from index.mako, a Mako template (which is mostly HTML anyhow). If you really can't figure out how it works, look up the Mako documentation.

FTP

We use proftpd (standalone daemon) as our FTP server.

To increase performance, we disable DNS lookups in proftpd.conf:

UseReverseDNS           off
IdentLookups            off

We also limit the amount of CPU/memory resources used (e.g. to minimize Globbing resources):

RLimitCPU               session 10
RLimitMemory            session 4096K

We allow a maximum of 500 concurrent FTP sessions:

MaxInstances            500
MaxClients              500

The contents of /mirror/root/include/motd.msg are displayed when a user connects.

rsync

We use rsyncd (standalone daemon).

We disable compression and checksumming in rsyncd.conf:

dont compress = *
refuse options = c delete

The contents of /mirror/root/include/motd.msg are displayed when a user connects.