Subject: Re: gulus.USherbrooke.ca dropped from the mirror list
From: Simon Valiquette <[email-masked]>
To: [email-masked]
Cc: [email-masked]
Date: Tue, 01 Jul 2008 05:44:13 -0400
List-Id: <cygwin.cygwin.com>

Christopher Faylor un jour écrivit:
 >>
 >>One Cygwin user warned me that when using our mirror, he got a warning
 >>telling him that our mirror is not anymore on the Cygwin official
 >>mirror list.
 >>
 >
 > The fact that you are listed on the official mirror page means that your
 > mirror is an official mirror.  You are also listed in setup.exe.  I just
 > checked.

   Ok, so I suppose that the problem that was reported to me has been 
resolved on the Cygwin side in the last 2 days.

 >>Also, It would be very useful for all mirror if this script would
 >>automatically email the faulty mirror sysadmin each time a problem is
 >>detected.  That would helps a lot to detect and fix problems soon after
 >>they happens.
 >>
 >
 > Oddly enough, that isn't the email address listed for this mirror in our
 > database.

   Whatever happened, thank you for fixing It.

 > That's one reason why we don't contact sites automatically.
 > I'm not interested in seeing bounce email.
 > The other reason is that it would be close to spam to be sending out
 > notices when mirrors drop off for a while.

   The script could send an email only the first time with the result of 
the failed tests, and a second email one week after if any test still 
fails.  If they both bounce, then you can safely and permanently remove 
the mirror.  This situation will almost never happens with well managed 
mirrors.

   It is exactly what kernel.org is doing with their scripts.

 > This could be due to network
 > problems at sourceware.org or on the other end.

   If they are experiencing networking problems, they won't be surprised 
to receive the email and won't complain.

   If you get more that 30 new bad mirrors (or whatever value make sense 
to you), then the problem is probably on your side and the script can 
decide not to send any email, except one to yourself asking you to check 
what is going on.  The email might find a way to reach you even if there 
is a networking problem.

 >  The messages wouldn't
 > be very precise and I'm not too keen on entering into a dialog with
 > people who are trying to figure out why they got email.

   The script from kernel.org say exactly what was tested and the exact 
answer received from the mirror (I think they use the error message 
returned by curl, but I guess that wget would also works).  That way, the 
email can easily describe the problem very clearly, at least for any 
reasonably technical mirror sysadmin.

 > I did send out a bunch of messages to people who were supposed to be
 > administrators a couple of weeks ago.  Half of the people didn't answer.
 >

   Personally, I would simply cleanup the mirror list and permanently drop 
off most of the mirrors that didn't answered, unless they are almost up to 
date.

 > So, since we have more than 100 mirrors, I'm not too worried if a mirror
 > drops off.  There are 54 bad mirrors in the database and, for those
 > which aren't just completely dead, I have contacted many of them to
 > alert them to the fact that they are no longer a Cygwin mirror.

   I believe that the script I talked about would be very useful for 
mirror sysadmin, and that It would be relatively easy to write It even in 
Bourne shell.  But maybe It is not worth the effort.

   Since I don't use Windows at all, and by extension Cygwin, you 
obviously understand much better than me how users are affected by bad 
mirrors.
My understanding is that users are only marginally affected.

 > Finally, you found the mirrors web page and you quoted text from it
 > but you missed the part that said:
 >
 > "If a site is listed here that seems to be out-of-date for some period
 >  of time, that could mean that there is a problem.  Contact sourcemaster
 >  at this site to report this potential problem.  sourcemaster is also
 >  the place to send requests to be added to this list."
 >

   Ah, I didn't realized that "sourcemaster at this site" was an email 
address (I read It quickly), and a quick search on the mailing list about 
mirror didn't gave me much useful information.

   I'll check with the person that reported this problem and send the 
result to the sourcemaster email address if there is still a problem.

   Thank you,

Simon Valiquette
http://gulus.USherbrooke.ca

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