Advice for Running Mirrors

Mirroring the GNU FTP server

First off, if you do mirror ftp.gnu.org, please drop us a line at webmasters@gnu.org so we can add you to the mirror list. And thanks.

Mirroring the entire GNU FTP server requires approximately 40GB disk space (as of 04 January 2007), which is distributed by the following way:

 /gnu:                12G 
 /non-gnu:           300M 
 /old-gnu:           700M 
 /gnu+linux-distros:  27G 

Due to resource and security concerns, we no longer offer direct rsync or FTP service to update mirrors. If you would like to use rsync (which is advisable) or FTP, there several reliable third party sites, that offer access to the material on ftp.gnu.org. They update directly from us on a regular basis and you may access them with (via rsync):

• rsync://mirrors.ibiblio.org/pub/gnu/ftp/ (USA)
• rsync://ftp.funet.fi/ftp/pub/mirrors/ftp.gnu.org/pub/gnu/ (Finland)
• rsync://gnu.c3sl.ufpr.br/gnu/ftp/ (Brazil)

and via ftp:

• ftp://mirrors.ibiblio.org/pub/mirrors/gnu/ftp/
• ftp://ftp.funet.fi/ftp/pub/mirrors/ftp.gnu.org/pub/gnu/
• ftp://gnu.c3sl.ufpr.br/gnu/ftp/

If your site can also offer general rsync access, please contact us.

Tips on updating from Ibiblio

• Ibiblio recommends using -rltp --delete for mirroring content from ftp.ibiblio.org via rsync. Using -x tends to cause client-side problems because they disable compression on their end. These options are good for the other sources too.
• For mirror admins, ibiblio-mirrors is a low-traffic email list for sites that mirror content from ibiblio servers. Here's a link to the mailman list page: http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/ibiblio-mirrors
• Specific questions and problem reports can be sent to: help-at-ibiblio-dot-org.

Mirroring the GNU Alpha FTP server

These sites also offer alpha.gnu.org for your mirroring pleasure:

• rsync://mirrors.ibiblio.org/pub/gnu/alpha/
• rsync://ftp.funet.fi/ftp/pub/mirrors/alpha.gnu.org/gnu/
• rsync://gnu.c3sl.ufpr.br/gnu/alpha/

and

• ftp://mirrors.ibiblio.org/pub/mirrors/gnu/alpha/
• ftp://ftp.funet.fi/ftp/pub/mirrors/alpha.gnu.org/gnu/
• ftp://gnu.c3sl.ufpr.br/gnu/alpha/

Mirroring the GNU web server

We no longer recommend creating web mirrors, because it has turned out that (a) few users can actually make use of them, and (b) many mirrors either became out of date or went offline relatively frequently. We don't want outdated information about the GNU project to be disseminated.

Nonetheless, if you wish to mirror www.gnu.org for your own purposes, that is ok with us. We recommend using mod_proxy. Here is an unsupported recipe of Apache directives for your <VirtualHost>:

ServerName gnumirror.example.org
CacheRoot "/var/cache/mod_proxy"
CacheDefaultExpire 86400 # for Apache 2.0+, value is in seconds
ProxyPass / http://www.gnu.org/
CacheEnable disk /

Thanks to Juri Hoerner for providing this Apache information.

Mirroring nongnu releases from Savannah

We are looking for volunteers to mirror releases of the nongnu projects hosted at savannah.nongnu.org. The total is currently around 5gb. To do this, we strongly suggest you retrieve and update the files using rsync -aHS --delete-excluded rsync://dl.sv.gnu.org/releases/ /yourdir
The options ensure that it is an exact mirror. (There will probably be some permission errors; just ignore them. They are due to choices or mistakes by savannah project maintainers.)

If you are able to help with this, please email us with the url to your mirror so we can add you to the list. Thanks!

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