Setting up a KDE.org FTP Mirror HOWTO

1. Determing your resources
2. Setting up rsync
3. Finishing up

Determing Your Resources

Before doing anything else, you should determine whether or not you have the resources to host a ftp.kde.org mirror. Try going through this rough checklist to gauge your status:

1. Are you in a location that needs a mirror? If you are in a country that doesn't have any (or few) mirrors, then disregard this checklist. We're happy to have you no matter what the conditions, in this case. If you are in a country like the USA or Germany which have lots of high-bandwidth mirrors, then please continue only if you are really dedicated to providing a mirror.
2. Do you have enough bandwidth? In general, we like our mirrors to have at least a 10Mbit/s "pipe." This should also be a fairly stable pipe. In other words, please don't run a mirror out of your dorm room or over home-use cable modem or DSL. If you are in a bandwidth starved country, please disgregard this checkpoint.
3. Do you have enough disk space? A full mirror of ftp.kde.org is roughly 40 Gigabytes. You may elect to mirror just the stable (or unstable) sections, but that will only save you a few gig.
4. How dedicated to this mirror are you? If you will only have access to your server and bandwidth for a few months, then we suggest you not sign up as a global mirror. We prefer that our mirrors have somebody willing to respond to changes to the KDE server in a timely fashion and will be around for the foreseeable future.

You may also want to decide if you want your mirror to be a "Primary" one. In this case, you must comply with the following criteria:

1. You must have at least a 100Mbit/s bandwidth pipe
2. You must mirror the entire KDE server (not just stable)
3. You must mirror from master.kde.org
4. You must be subscribed to the kde-mirrors mailing list and must respond to changes quickly
5. During a release week, you must update your mirror every two hours or so

Setting Up Rsync

The recommended way to update your mirror is to use rsync on the master.kde.org server. This will allow you to update daily with only the changed files being transferred. Please do not update from ftp.kde.org. You may use any update tool you like (like 'emirror' or 'fmirror') but those won't be discussed here.

You may download rsync from http://rsync.samba.org

There are two common rsync "modules" that you may want to use. The first, and most popular and recommended, is [kdeftp] (roughly 40 Gigabytes). The other common one is [kdestableftp] (roughly 20 Gigabytes) which contains only the /pub/kde/stable tree. Please use the latter one only if you are severely cramped for space. If you require different access, send an email to the webmaster as there are other modules.

Here is a quick example of an rsync invocation. This assumes that your mirror will be in /home/ftp/pub/kde and you want a full KDE mirror.

rsync -rlpt --delete master.kde.org::kdeftp /home/ftp/pub/kde

You will likely want to set this up as a cron job for automatic updating. Here is an example of a job that updates once a day (assumes that you put the rsync command in a script called mirror_kde.sh).

# run at 2am every morning

0 2 * * *       $HOME/bin/mirror_kde.sh

Finishing Up

At this point, you should have a fully working KDE.org FTP mirror. Now, all you need to do is send an email to the webmaster to get listed on the mirrors page. Send the following information:

• The server address
• Your country (e.g., Italy)
• Your name and email
• Your available bandwidth
• Your update frequency
• Your update method (rsync, fmirror, etc)
• Whether or not you want to be a primary mirror

Also, please subscribe to the kde-mirrors mailing list. It is a low-volume contact list for all KDE mirror admins.