Frequently Asked Questions

How often is this mirror updated?

The main update script is run at least once every three hours. This script walks through each project sequentially and rsyncs it from an upstream mirror. If any one project takes a long time to update, the next run of the script is designed to overtake it, skip the still running project, and continue on with the rest of the projects from there.

What hardware is this mirror running on?

The base hardware for this mirror is a Supermicro X10DRU-i+ 2RU box hosted in AS7034 for the benefit of FCIX members and the Internet as a whole.

The server configuration consists of:

  • Dual E5-2676 v3 CPUs
  • 384GB of RAM (24x16GB DDR4)
  • 4x10GbaseT on-board NICs in a port channel
  • 6x 16TB Seagate Exos drives using ZFS with SSD L2ARC read caches

Most of this hardware was funded by generous contributions from FCIX members and random friends on Twitter.

Do you offer RSYNC access?

We do support Rsync access for all projects hosted on this mirror, but we have IP ACLs for each module limiting access to clients who have contacted us.

If you run a public mirror, or are working to set one up and would like access to our rsync modules, please email [email protected] with your source IP addresses and which rsync modules you would like access to.

We also offer MQTT based push mirroring, where we have a local MQTT broker running on mirror.fcix.net and we publish a message to rsync/mirror.fcix.net/PROJECT immediately upon completely an rsync from upstream.

Why isn’t [INSERT PROJECT NAME] hosted here?

Odds are no one has asked for it yet. You can email us if you think a particular project would be of value on here.

When looking at hosting new projects, we take into consideration the following criteria:

  1. Would the project benefit from an additional mirror given their current fleet of mirrors and popularity of the project?
  2. Is the required disk space for the project relative to the amount of traffic served for it justified?
  3. Does the project use community mirrors for their main automatic load balancer? Or would we only receive traffic from users who manually pointed their clients at us?
  4. Does the project allow us to use a single or multiple rsync commands to update our mirror, or do they require us to run their provided software?

Projects which have already been considered and disqualified include:

  • Debian: The ftpsync tool required by Debian is clunky and doesn’t integrate well into our update pipeline at all, and the Debian infrastructure team is unresponsive to new mirrors.
  • Debian-cd: The debian-cd project appears to have never actually been rolled into production, and the Debian infra team stopped accepting new registrations for mirrors several years ago.
  • FreeBSD: Doesn’t appear to use community mirrors in their primary load balancer
  • The rest of the BSDs: Don’t seem to be operationally significant enough to need additional mirrors.
  • Docker-ce: Doesn’t appear to use community mirrors.
  • Proxmox: Doesn’t appear to use community mirrors.
  • Apache: Note on site “as of August, 2021, the ASF itself is not accepting further mirror site applications”
  • Kali: We contacted Kali and confirmed that they want all mirrors running ftpsync, which is a deal breaker for us.
  • EndeavourOS: Was unable to find any documentation on how to become a project mirror.
  • Gentoo: We noted tickets opened several years prior which were never actioned, so Gentoo appears to not need any more mirrors.
  • Rocky: Poor release engineering standards and a toxic community
  • Centos-stream: Redhat doing a poor job of managing the community around their development branch for RHEL.
  • FreeDOS: They’re happy with their one mirror and don’t have a load balancer set up to use multiple mirrors.