UNC Linux Users Group

[Cristóbal Palmer <cmpalmer AT metalab.unc.edu>]

On Wed, Jan 09, 2008 at 07:59:35PM -0500, Chris Calloway wrote:
> I'm just now seeing this after a holidays hard drive crash.
> 
> Why isn't ibiblio mirroring Ubuntu?

In a sense we are, since I work for ibiblio and this mirror is running
on my ibiblio-provided workstation. But yes, it's not an official
mirror. Why no official mirror? Well...

(1) Space. We run on donated hardware, and we're running short on disk
as usual. If you have hardware to donate, let me know.

(2) Bandwidth. We cap our bandwidth to the commercial Internet because
of high costs. If ibiblio had an official mirror, it would
realistically only serve the academic community effectively.

(3) They haven't asked. Canonical has amassed a fairly large list of
mirrors that work fairly well for most people, and they've never
approached ibiblio about us mirroring Ubuntu.

Believe me, getting an Ubuntu mirror officially hosted by ibiblio is
something that I'm eager to have happen. As soon as it's possible,
I'll push for it. As it is, I'm already running Ubuntu on my
workstation, and there are handy scripts that make setting up an
Ubuntu mirror easy, so I'm doing that.

Make sense?

Cheers,
CMP

> 
> -- 
> Sincerely,
> 
> Chris Calloway
> http://www.seacoos.org
> office: 332 Chapman Hall   phone: (919) 962-4323
> mail: Campus Box #3300, UNC-CH, Chapel Hill, NC 27599
> 
> Cristóbal Palmer wrote:
> > Hi LUGers,
> > 
> > I'm writing to share the news of a UNC-CH campus-based Ubuntu *gutsy*
> > mirror, my desktop. If you're at UNC or NCSU you have access to this
> > mirror.
> > 
> > Note that I'm NOT, repeat: NOT mirroring -security or deb-src sections
> > of the repositories, and the only release I'm currently mirroring is
> > the most recent desktop release, gutsy. There are several reasons for
> > this. The reason I'm not mirroring deb-src is space. If you need
> > sources, you can still get them from the main mirrors and chances are
> > you'll only be getting sources for choice few packages. The reason for
> > not mirroring -security is that YOU want to get your security updates
> > as promptly as possible. If you got them from me, you might be delayed
> > by as much as six hours, and in the case of a critical, remotely
> > exploitable problem, I wouldn't want that for you.
> > 
> > Use this mirror at your own risk. PLEASE MAKE BACKUPS of both your
> > /etc/apt/sources.list and any important data before you use this. So,
> > now that I've given all those caveats, here's the mirror URL:
> > 
> > http://garp.metalab.unc.edu/ubuntu
> > 
> > So how would you use mirror? You'd edit your /etc/apt/sources.list to
> > point to garp instead of whatever you're currently pointing at, BUT
> > ONLY for some of the lines. DO NOT set garp as your source for deb-src
> > or -security lines, again since I'm not mirroring those.
> > 
> > Here's an example of a working /etc/apt/sources.list file:
> > 
> > http://crossfade.metalab.unc.edu/sources.list
> > 
> > Please note that the GUI way to edit your sources file (System ->
> > Administration -> Software Sources) will not work in this case, since
> > I'm definitely not an official mirror.
> > 
> > "You're not official! How can I be sure you haven't done something
> > eeeevil??" I hear you ask. Two things: (1) ultimately you can't, but
> > that's not really terribly different than much of the rest of the
> > process that brought you any GNU/Linux distro: it's a matter of
> > trust. (2) The packages are signed with a gpg key. If I'd changed them
> > between pulling them from the main mirror and handing them to you,
> > you'd see it as an error when pulling updates. See
> > https://help.ubuntu.com/community/SecureApt for more on this.
> > 
> > For the curious, here's the page that showed me how to set up the mirror:
> > 
> > https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Debmirror
> > 
> > If anybody has questions, please let me know.
> > 
> > Cheers,
> 
> 
> 
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-- 
Cristóbal Palmer
ibiblio.org systems administrator