Advice for Running Mirrors

Table of Contents

• Mirroring the GNU Web server
• Mirroring the GNU FTP server

Mirroring the GNU Web server

Mirroring the GNU Web server requires roughly 2.5GB of disk space (as of 25 June 2003).

All the cross-references between our web pages use absolute file names (starting with /). We chose this convention because some browsers get confused by relative file names in links; in addition, counting the number of times to use ../ in a relative file name is not reliable.

The absolute file names assume that the root web directory is the top-level GNU directory. If your mirror server is not dedicated to the GNU project alone, that will not be true. Here are ways you can compensate for that:

• Use Roxen (formerly called Spinner) as your web server, and set up a separate ``virtual server'' whose root web directory is the top-level GNU directory. That virtual server will be the GNU mirror.
• There are other web servers which support virtual servers. For example Apache (another free server) supports them.
• It should not be very hard to write a shell script to modify the contents of the pages to go in a subdirectory. The script should insert an additional directory name and a slash after each occurrence of HREF="/ inside an <A tag and of SRC="/ inside an <IMG tag. It should not modify other occurrences of HREF or SRC.

  If you'd like to write this script and verify that it works properly for all our pages, that would be useful.

Once your mirror site is operating, you can update the contents automatically, by

• using the GPLed program Wget, an non-interactive web-mirroring utility.

  You can download Wget, via anonymous FTP, from http://ftp.gnu.org/pub/gnu/wget/, or from a local mirror site.

[Note]: due to security concerns, we no longer use rsync to update mirrors.

Mirroring the GNU FTP server

Mirroring the GNU FTP server requires roughly 20GB disk space (as of 29 June 2003).

When mirroring our FTP server, we suggest that you use the GPLed program Wget, or another free software ftp fetching utility.

[Note]: due to security concerns, we no longer use rsync to update mirrors.

FSF & GNU inquiries & questions to gnu@gnu.org. Other ways to contact the FSF.

Comments on these web pages to webmasters@gnu.org.

Copyright (C) 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999 Free Software Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place - Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111, USA

Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire article is permitted in any medium, provided this notice is preserved.

Updated: Last modified: Mon May 20 09:48:22 EDT 2002