Re: mirrors.wikimedia.org will be sunset on May 15

All MediaWiki-Docker instances are configured to use mirrors.wikimedia.org.
Breaking this would potentially break all of CI and the setups of
effectively a large majority of those who develop software for MediaWiki.

Regards,
Sohom Datta
---
Open-source contributor @Wikimedia


On Thu, Apr 16, 2026 at 9:04 AM Moritz Mühlenhoff via Wikitech-l <
[email protected]> wrote:

> What happens
>
> mirrors.wikimedia.org will be sunset on May 15.
>
> What do I need to do?
>
> Probably nothing. This is not a widely used service. If you use the
> service via the Debian mirror rotation one of the many other servers
> will take over. If you have actively configured mirrors.wikimedia.org
> in your APT configuration on Debian/Ubuntu (desktop, virtual machine
> or server) you need to switch to a different server. This shouldn’t
> take more than a minute.
> You can find alternatives on https://www.debian.org/mirror/list and
> https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+cdmirrors. If you use Windows or Mac you
> will not be affected.
>
>
> Why
>
> The usefulness of this service has diminished over time. Since the
> initial creation Debian has built a CDN (deb.debian.org) to provide
> Debian packages and most systems use it today for more fine-grained
> geographical access and overall better resiliency.
>
> The service is not behind the Wikimedia CDN which provides all the
> countermeasures to aggressive scraping. Sometimes AI scrapers degrade
> the service temporarily and moving it behind the CDN would involve
> substantial engineering efforts. The hardware running the mirror
> server is at its estimated lifetime and would need to be replaced.
>
> Since it is no longer needed the way it was when it was created, we
> can be of more use to the Wikimedia movement by spending these
> resources elsewhere.
>
>
> Where can I follow the process?
>
> This Phabricator ticket:
> https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T416707
>
> Cheers,
> Moritz
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