There has never been a formalized process for adding mirrors to the site,
which I think it probably the source of people's complaints. I'm stating
this as a fact, not as an intentional situation or an ideal situation, just
as a fact.
The things you should know when complaining about this:
1) The list of mirror sites is in a CVS tree, which every core member of
the development team has commit access to. Thus, adding a mirror is a
really simple process, and any core member who is informed of a new mirror
site should really take it upon themselves to deal with that information.
I am pretty sure I have added mirrors that I've been directly informed of
fairly quickly. I, however, do not answer [EMAIL PROTECTED] mail.
2) The list is a simple flat-file, not a database. Which mean adding is a
manual process. It also means removal is a manual process. A few months
back I was getting tired of the dead links in the mirrors database and went
about scanning them, and mirrors which were inaccessible or no longer
online or not current after a few days were removed, WITH notification to
the mirror maintainer. Some mirrors were reinstated on the list after
being brought back up or made current.
3) The "closer.cgi" script uses the reverse-DNS of the IP number of the
request to "guess" which country-code you're in and thus which set of
mirrors to respond. If you think your mirror isn't listed, please please
check the full list of mirrors. Note that "country code" != the last
segment of the hostname of the mirror.
Clearly the "ideal" situation would be a database which eliminated the need
for someone within the apache team to maintain this database, coupled with
a scanning program which could check each link on a periodic basis for
freshness. There was a volunteer doing this at one point but he appears to
have lost interest. If anyone would like to volunteer to build this
"ideal" setup, great, I can provide you with an account at apache.org, a
mysql database, and you can develop under mod_php or mod_jserv with mysql
as the backend (they're already installed).
Until that time, it's clear the submission duties need to be formalized a
bit more, or at least separated from the details of handling
[EMAIL PROTECTED] mail. Therefore I've created a "mirror-submit" alias at
apache.org, and updated the web pages accordingly. That address goes to
me, and I will deal with the requests for adds/removes. I may have a
couple-day delay simply for efficiency, but I will respond to all messages
sent to that address. Hopefully others in the development group can pick
this up at some point.
So, in the future, please send any changes to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Please let me know if there are other places I should mention this address.
Thanks, and sorry if anyone felt personally slighted by the lack of process.
Brian
At 09:49 AM 12/30/98 -0500, Eric Gauthier wrote:
>Corneliu,
>
>>So, "Mr. Brian", had informed us that our server was removed from the
>>mirror list (but our mirror was *never* mentioned on their list).
>
>I really don't want to get into the bigger debate of why it is so difficult
>to get your site onto the mirrors list (I've heard lots of complaints and
>I don't have anything to do with it). But, its my impression that Brian
>isn't the one who actually puts people onto the mirrors list - I think its
>someone else at apache. I just want to make sure that the flames (which
>appear deserved) are directed at the right person... Perhapse Brian could
>tell us what the actual internal procedure is then the others on this list
>could help out the newer members?
>
> -- Eric
>
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