Re: how to manage gaps in Valid-Until of ftp.us.debian.org

FWIW - I just found the note in the "full mirror list" page about not
mirroring from the US round-robin which I have taken to heart with an entry
in /etc/hosts.

https://www.debian.org/mirror/list-full

There isn't anything on this page (one might consider an asterisk or
permalink to the note since the US mirror cluster appears to be a special
case). Nevertheless, sorry for missing that as the round-robin issue is
noted.

https://www.debian.org/mirror/list

I think I've managed to get an understanding of the basic mirroring
dynamics here:

https://www.debian.org/mirror/ftpmirror

Nevertheless, it still seems to me that wheezy-updates at an individual
member of ftp.us.debian.org (let's pick on 64.50.233.100) had a 3 minute
gap in its Valid-Until (8:58-9:01 UTC on 31 July 2014). Am I incorrect on
that point? Is this expected behavior? Might I be better off becoming a
push client mirror?

--
Tom Downes
Associate Scientist and Data Center Manager
Center for Gravitation, Cosmology and Astrophysics
University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
414.229.2678

On Thu, Jul 31, 2014 at 11:57 AM, Tom Downes <[email protected]> wrote:

Hi:
>
> I maintain a local mirror of the standard debian.org repositories for
> squeeze and wheezy. I am finding lately that there are significant gaps in
> the Valid-Until entry for my mirror of the wheezy-updates repo.
>
> I can trace this back to the fact that Valid-Until entry differs
>
> ftp://128.61.240.89/debian/dists/wheezy-updates/Release (15:00 UTC)
> ftp://64.50.233.100/debian/dists/wheezy-updates/Release (09:01 UTC)
> ftp://64.50.236.52/debian/dists/wheezy-updates/Release  (09:01 UTC)
>
> What should my expectations be for mirroring ftp.us.debian.org? If I were
> to mirror on the 64.50 entries every morning at 10h UTC, would I be
> guaranteed to have only a 1h gap in my local mirror?
>
> My local mirror's previous entry expired at 08:58 UTC which is suggestive
> of a 3 minute period during which ftp.us.debian.org did not provide a
> bugfix repository which self-declares as valid.
>
> It seems to me that there should never be gaps in the Valid-Until provided
> by a primary mirror. That is, if the maintainers of the debian.org
> repositories intend to update every 7 days, that the previous entry should
> be valid for 8 days. But I'll allow I haven't thought about repo management
> a whole lot so there may be good reasons to prefer a gap in validity to a
> repository declaring itself as valid even if it is slightly out-of-date.
>
> I'm not sure if this problem affects other repos at debian.org. I tried
> some simple google searches to see if this particular problem has been
> reported before, but I only saw evidence of what appears to be transient
> issues in the "Valid-Until" rather than something systematic like the above.
>
> --
> Tom Downes
> Associate Scientist and Data Center Manager
> Center for Gravitation, Cosmology and Astrophysics
> University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
> 414.229.2678
>