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Re: setting up mirrors



On Thu, Feb 01, 2001 at 06:35:15PM +0000, Ruchir Tewari typed:
 
[quoting Atul]

> How would one ensure that such a facility is not misused by the
> maintainers? What kind of accountability could one ensure? And how?
> ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
 
> What exactly are you trying to say. If anybody decides to host
> a server, they are doing you a service. Why and how would they
> themselves misuse it ?  If it's at an ISP or a university

Right.  Whoever pays the piper calls the tune.  Just because whoever has
provided the box and bandwidth donates it to be run as a linux mirror doesn't
mean he can't do whatever else he pleases with it (host commercial sites on the
box, say)

The other thing Atul is (I feel) trying to imply by "misuse" is that whoever is
sponsoring the box will use it as a publicity vehicle.  So what?  As long as
the linux community in India gets a fast, local mirror for apps, what's the
problem if whoever's shelling out for a box and bandwidth gets publicity? 

Both these are "straw man" arguments - quite hollow and without a shred of
substance.  Finally, if there's any "inappropriate use" of the server, it will
cause enough of a flamewar on LIH and other places, so that the bad publicity
(and peer pressure) will be enough to dissuade the guy from trying it.

> or a techie insitute, there will probabaly be enough talent in
> house to keep the server up and running.  For e.g the IITM
> and the TIFR mirrors that were mentioned previously in this
> thread. Our task is to find more of such good hearted souls to
> set up additional mirrors all over the country.
 
Perfectly stated.

> If the talent is not available inhouse, some of the ILUG members
> could volunteer to help out from time to time.
 
Cant be done on a _volunteer_ basis.  This sort of thing requires dedicated
24*7 staff somewhere, which means a co-lo at some ISP or the other.

> A 2 Mb outgoing pipe will be fantastic, especially if we can get
> it at many different locations.
 
It will do for starters, you mean.  FTP mirrors require lots more bandwidth.
Ask Raju - I think Palcom.Net (where he is now) hosts a Tucows mirror (one of
the two such in India).  I think that means we have a linuxberg mirror in India
as well.  So, he can give us some useful data on bandwidth, disk space,
estimated costs etc.

>   Our friends in TIFR and IITM could pitch in.
>   This'll probabaly be just a few pages long.
 
Start small - a set of local mirrors (with 2 mbps pipes or whatever) - but only
catering to the local audience (for example, hyderabad's ftp server would only
allow ftp access from the IP blocks of Hyderabadi ISPs).  Perhaps a needless
precaution - if I'm in Hyd and there's a local mirror, I wont waste time trying
to ftp to Delhi or Calcutta.

Plus, with local mirrors, the "peer pressure" factor I mentioned above is
intensified.  The guy who's "inappropriately using" the server knows that he's
not the only guy around who can offer this, and so will be extra careful _not_
to offend.

	--suresh