The content of this topic has been archived on 14 Apr 2018. There are no obvious gaps in this topic, but there may still be some posts missing at the end.
Hi!
As downloads.openwrt.org seems to be down quite often recently, i'd like to host a mirror.
So my questions are:
* with whom should i coordinate? I know there's the possibility of using wget to create the mirror but that seems like a pretty ineffective way to me.
* Is there a list of public openwrt mirrors available somewhere?
* Are there any plans to use multiple servers for downloads.openwrt.org so not everything is down if one server dies?
~ centf
This problem is being addressed, check the news section.
Hi!
As much as i like it, that someone is fixing the HDDs, i still think that this does not fix the problem of one single download server.
If something like this happens again, then we're back to where we have been the last few days.
Why not create multiple mirrors and rotate them, or at least have a list of mirrors to go to in case of downtime?
The only real mirror i found is the one at ba.mirror.garr.it/mirrors/openwrt/. It serves files via HTTP and FTP.
Edit: I started a list: https://wiki.openwrt.org/about/mirrors
(Last edited by centf on 19 Feb 2016, 21:44)
Why not create multiple mirrors and rotate them, or at least have a list of mirrors to go to in case of downtime?
+1
I would also like to host a mirror.
Preferably with some HowTo how to setup a mirror and keep it up to date.
And then there is the issue, that IPv6-only devices running OpenWrt unfortunately cannot reach downloads.openwrt.org, since its IPv4-only.
Mirrors would be highly appreciated, and a way for them to easily stay in sync, like rsync or ftp.
Did you try this? https://wiki.openwrt.org/about/mirrors
Did you try this? https://wiki.openwrt.org/about/mirrors
How does this help to get the upstream files? Of course I could bootstrap my mirror from another mirror, but some "policy" by OpenWRT would be nice. This could be something like "we only support some trustworthy first level mirrors from admins we personally met, if you want your own mirror, get your stuff there", but at the moment there's no statement by OpenWRT at all. 
I second the idea having multiple mirrors. Is ther a chance there will be rsync on downloads.openwrt.org? This would make things less complicated. I already talked to people which offered me hosting a mirror.
I have asked ftp.nluug.nl, a well-respected international mirror site that mirrors a significant portion of all open source projects out there, whether they would mirror download.openwrt.org, and they agreed, however, they wonder how to go about making this an "official" mirror, one that people know they can trust. Note that the actual Download link points to a page that makes absolutely no mention whatsoever of the existence of any mirrors. The documentation has a "Where to get Packages" page, which points to a wiki page listing two mirror sites, and which documents that using any mirror requires manual editing of multiple exact URLs in a text file. This is not a convenient mechanism to use mirrors.
Note that generally, for any open source project of any significance, having multiple redundant download locations is a basic part of the infrastructure of the project. I'm a bit surprised that OpenWRT seems to think that the solution to repeated outages of their one single download site is to "fix the hard disks".
Please, people, take the offer. There are respected sites out there that would be happy to provide a secure mirror of your download site, thus improving both availability and performance, but you will need to provide the infrastructure to make those mirrors an integral part of your software download procedure.
(Last edited by wfk on 9 Apr 2016, 17:06)
As an OpenWrt user in Singapore (Asia-Pacific), OpenWrt’s official repository has pretty high latency from here, and it makes fetching files very slow (this is made worse by fetching multiple files per package).
I think OpenWrt has reached a critical mass globally (especially in Asia due to the proliferation of low-cost developer boards), and it’s time to consider (minimally) a DNS-based homing and/or round-robin solution to direct opkg to the nearest mirror. DNS-based homing won’t affect existing setups and requires no changes to opkg feeds on older OpenWrt releases.
This is similar to what Arch Linux ARM does, where their (default) master mirror resolves to geographically-closest mirrors, and mirrors set up a name-based virtualhost to answer to the hostname/domain of the master mirror.
As wfk as mentioned, many reputable mirror sites (including my own at http://mirror.0x.sg/ catering to Singapore) are happy to go through the hoops to set up rsync pulls and name-based virtualhosting for the benefit of the OpenWrt community.
It would be great if downloads.openwrt.org was available by rsync to begin with 
The discussion might have continued from here.