path: root/share/man/man7/mirroring-ports.7

.\" $OpenBSD: mirroring-ports.7,v 1.9 2003/03/16 10:30:26 avsm Exp $
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.\" Copyright (c) 2000 Marc Espie
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.Dd February 19, 2000
.Dt MIRRORING-PORTS 7
.Os
.Sh NAME
.Nm mirroring-ports
.Nd how to build a mirror for ports distfiles
.Sh DESCRIPTION
The
.Nm OpenBSD Ports Collection
offers some powerful tools to mirror software sources.
The ports infrastructure provides a
.Ar mirror-maker
target that can be used to build a Makefile to facilitate mirroring
distfiles.
This target builds
.Ic ${DISTDIR}/Makefile ,
which can be used on almost any Unix-like machine to mirror
.Ox
distfiles.
.Pp
A sample Makefile entry is formatted like this:
.Bd -literal
all:: audio/tracker/tracker-5.3
.PHONY: audio/tracker/tracker-5.3
audio/tracker/tracker-5.3::  tracker-5.3.tgz

tracker-5.3.tgz: $F
        @MAINTAINER="espie@openbsd.org" \\
         SITES="ftp://ftp.uni-trier.de/pub/unix/audio/tracker/ " \\
         CIPHER="sha1" CKSUM="b0973d6a9c363caebd3a71547412f42b0681f323" \\
         exec ${FETCH} "$@"


.Ed
This Makefile is usually invoked by the user from the directory where
they wish to mirror distfiles, with variables
.Ev FETCH
and
.Ev F
set on the command line, e.g.,
.Bd -literal -offset indent
cd mirror && make -j 5 -f path_to_makefile FETCH=fetch_script
.Ed
.Pp
Targets are set up so that each port is referenced by its full name, and
retrieves all its distfiles.
The default
.Ar all
target is used to retrieve all distfiles.
Targets
.Ar ftp
and
.Ar cdrom
can be used to retrieve all distfiles necessary to build ftp and cdrom
packages, respectively.
Actual fetching is usually invoked with a parallel-make option, so that
several retrievals through ftp can proceed simultaneously.
.Pp
The
.Ev F
variable can be set to a dummy name, or a recent filename, to force
re-fetching of anything which is older than the filename.
Its intended use is to force re-fetching existing files,
or to checksum all files.
.Pp
The
.Ev ${FETCH}
script should be supplied by the user, and will download and verify the
archive file.
It must obey the following variables:
.Bl -tag -width DIST_SUBDIR
.It Ev MAINTAINER
Port maintainer, used to report errors,
.It Ev ERROR
Some ports problems can be detected while building the Makefile, in which
case this variable will be set to a proper error message.
.It Ev DIST_SUBDIR
See
.Xr ports 7
for more details.
The
.Ev ${FETCH}
script is responsible for creating this subdirectory and cd'ing to it
before performing the actual fetch.
.It Ev SITES
A list of sites to try for fetching the distribution file.
.It Ev CIPHER
The checksumming utility to use for verifying the distribution file.
It will normally be set to
.Xr sha1 1
unless you tinker with
.Ev PREFERRED_CIPHER
while building the mirroring Makefile.
.It Ev CKSUM
The corresponding checksum.
If neither
.Ev CIPHER
nor
.Ev CKSUM
nor
.Ev ERROR
are set, the distribution file needs not be checked.
.El
.Pp
A standard fetch strategy is to try all sites in order: whenever the
distribution file is found, download it; verify the checksum; erase the
file and try the next site if it doesn't match.
.Pp
Mirroring sites should update their master Makefile fairly often.
Activities a proper mirror should offer (in order of decreasing importance):
.Bl -tag -width XXXXXXXXX
.It Mirror new files
Use a proper fetch script to download missing files,
.It Run Pa ${PORTSDIR}/infrastructure/fetch/link-checksums
This script creates permanent hardlinks that preserve distfiles against
checksum changes.
.It Verify all checksums
All checksums should be verified from time to time, and maintainers
notified of persistent discrepancies,
.It Check mastersites liveliness
Use a tool such as
.Sq mirror
to check that the master sites haven't fallen
off the Earth.
Even though the first site in the site list is the
most important site, good mirrors will scan all sites and report all
problems,
.It Remove old files
To gain room this, the mirror should maintain a list of
.Sq active
files (easy enough, just provide a fetch script that just lists the
file names), and remove files that are no longer active.
Since
.Ox
releases happen every six months, this delay should be longer than that.
.El
Sample scripts are provided in the
.Pa ${PORTSDIR}/infrastructure/fetch
directory.
.Sh CAVEATS
Changing checksums is a recurring problem that is outside the direct
control of the
.Ox
Project.
Some software distributors change distribution files without
warning, without changing the file name proper.
Once the problem has been identified, the port maintainer should usually
contact the software author to fix the problem, or, if the software author
is unresponsive, the maintainer should use
.Ev DIST_SUBDIR
to provide some state to guard against shifting checksums.
.Pp
However, a more robust approach is also needed, so that ports users can
depend on distfiles mirrors to carry what they need irregardless of those
synchronization issues.
The
.Pa link-checksums
script creates another access to the distfiles, indexed through the actual
checksums that the files should match.
Provided mirroring is run sufficiently often, together with
.Pa link-checksums ,
two versions of the same distfile with respective checksums cksum1 and cksum2
will be available under the names
.Pa ${DISTFILES}/sha1/cksum1/distfile
and
.Pa ${DISTFILES}/sha1/cksum2/distfile .
.Pp
Starting revision 1.281, if
.Ev REFETCH
is set to true,
.Pa bsd.port.mk
will try to retrieve files under that naming scheme as a last resort.
.Sh FILES
.Bl -tag -width XXXXXXXXX -compact
.It Pa ${DISTDIR}/Makefile
Main mirroring Makefile
.It Pa ${PORTSDIR}/infrastructure/fetch/fetch-all
Sample script usable to retrieve distfiles.
.It Pa ${PORTSDIR}/infrastructure/fetch/check-all
Sample script to check all distfiles checksums.
.It Pa ${PORTSDIR}/infrastructure/fetch/link-checksums
Populating checksums subdirectories with links, to guard against shifting
checksums.
.El
.Sh HISTORY
This infrastructure was introduced for
.Ox 2.7
by Marc Espie, with feedback from Bob Beck, Todd Fries, Camiel Dobbelaar,
and a few other people.
.Sh SEE ALSO
.Xr ports 7