2007/9/28, eliott <eliott@cactuswax.net>:
Ok. Starting a new thread for some discussion.
Roman did great work generating an up to date mirror list.
I changed the "get arch" page to a layout more conducive to "new users". In doing so, I realized that the focus of that page is for downloading ISOs (eg. Getting arch).
I think I am going to change the layout a bit, and link directly to the /iso/ folder on the mirrors listed. I am going to incorporate the changes roman made, regarding mirrors, and only include those that offer isos *in that page*.
This leads me to an interesting suggestion. Should be create a page with an more official list of mirrors, and list only teir1 mirrrors (those that we allow rysnc from on gerolde)? We can list the top level http, ftp, and rsync locations for those servers (if they have them). We can then link to the Wiki for "teir2" mirrors. Those that we do not allow direct sync from gerolde, but are viable alternatives nonetheless. Maybe those servers sync from one of the teir1 servers.
This should allow us to keep a handle on the teir1 servers, and whom we allow to sync against gerolde, as well as provide a mechanism for the community to manage the list of teir{n} servers more effectively.
Not sure how the tie-in to pacman's mirror list is going to handle this, insofar as teir1..n mirrors.
Thoughts?
I'm not 100% sure but I think that all mirrors that are listed in pacman's mirrorlist are rsyncing from rsync.archlinux.org (if one or thwo of them are not - then they should, IMO). Since we don't have a lot of mirrors I don't think it's reasonable to do 2-tier mirror network. I propose the following: 1) Any mirror that is not synced from rsync.archlinux.org should not be listed in pacman's mirrorlist. Users could add any preferred mirror from "Unofficial mirrors" section on Wiki is enought IMO. Similarly there's no reason to have a long list of unofficial mirrors on Get Arch page. 2) All official mirrors should provide and keep up-to-date the following info: a) FTP/HTTP/rsync URLs it is highly recommended that they are the same, so users could easily change which protocol they like to use in pacman's mirrorlist, we could even add a comment to each server in pacman's mirrorlist indicating whether alternative protocol is available b) bandwidth (sometimes there are even different limits for local vs foreign users) c) email address of admin e) timeframes when mirror is synced 3) All official mirrors are recommended to use the script from http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Local_Mirror#The_synchronization_script with SYNC_REPO=() or SYNC_REPO=(core extra unstable testing community iso) 4) outdated or incomplete mirrors should be removed from pacman's mirrorlist and hosts.alllow 5) we should limit the number of official mirrors, depending on the size of country/region (e.g. not 15 mirrors for Vatican and 2 for USA :-P) -- Roman Kyrylych (Роман Кирилич)