🚀 go-pugleaf

j.stokes@student.anu.edu.au (Jason Stokes) writes:

>In article <554ctl$j35@hobyah.cc.uq.oz.au>, lucifer@maths.uq.edu.au (David
>Conran) wrote:

>: It costs money/time/effort to maintain a ftp site, and it is pretty hard
>: to charge for it to re-coup money, you can't advertise as well as you can
>: on www on ftp :)
>: Love and voulenteers soon run out of steam.

>Lots of people run ftp sites for all kinds of motivations - anti-cultists
>run ftp sites because they want to spread the word about cults.  I don't
>think it's likely the problem is lack of volunteers - hell, I'd volunteer
>to run a linux ftp site if it would help.

Be sure of what you are saying/offering before you do :)
Having setup the linux mirror at ftp.dstc.edu.au (yes .. it was my baby)
I can tell you, a *lot* of effort goes in to maintain it. Much more
than you imagine.

I was thinking of moving the mirror to my site but a) my dept. can't
afford the hardware. 18gb of disk ain't cheap. b) we may get slugged
with internet traffic charges soon .. so ..

The linux mirror is a real *bitch* to maintain (for those of you thinking of
doing it.)
a) It is huge! (We laughed when people told us they were going to mirror all
of it off us on to there new 2Gb disk :)
b) It is updated constantly.
c) All different parts of it update at different times and concurrently, 
   thus if you are bogged down downloading say, redhat section of the
   archive, you start to get way behind on they other parts (and people start
   complaining to you)
d) The mirror software stinks when you have a v.large mirror .. and a slow
   link.
e) Carving it up into seperate parts for different mirror's is not as simple
   as you would think.
d) Memory usage of 'mirror' when mirroring an archive of that magnitude is
   horendous (sp)
f) problems of directories/logical areas of the mirrors not fitting within
   disk parameters. (ie .. 1.5Gb of redhat growing on a 2Gb disk ... and
   getting beyond 2gb)
g) backing it all up .. because if you have a disk failure .. it takes
   months to re-sync.
h) Mirror processes running for 3+days solid. (The fact that a good proportion
   of the files changed before you download them {of the ones you want to down
   load})
i) The bandwidth needed for the people accessing it is huge.
   (Can your lan deal with 2-4gb per day being sent across it and out your
    front door?)
j) Who is going to pay for the extra bandwidth?
k) The amount of time you have to mail sysadmin's that users from there site
   decided that your well know site is a great repository for warez and
   a great place to send a file to a friend where they can pick it up
   latter.
l) The implications of when some warez-junkie decides to do k) to your
   origin site .. and you start mirroring copyright'd software.
m) fixing bizarre problems with ol' netscape leaving ftp sessions open forever.
n) fixing people who decided they should open 10 ftp's to your machine.
o) Telling people "No, we won't allow NFS mounts"
p) Explaining to staff why they can't use there own ftp server because it is
   full of outside people
q) constantly refining your scripts to optimise performace of the mirror and
   attempting to get a connection into a already login choked ftp server
r) not really being able to do this during the day because you have a real
   job that your employer is paying for. And when you are working on it
   late at night .. that voice in the back of your head saying "I am not
   getting paid for this ..."
s) Explaining to people that the archive is not corrupt .. but typing 'bin'
   before downloading is a neat idea.
t) helping out poor folk who time out downloading a huge archive .. and
   splitting it up for them.
u) fielding linux install/setup questions ... because you mirror it, you
   *have* to know about all of it don't you ;-)
v) the amount of heat given off in your poor little computer room by all those
   disks (this is much less of a problem if you have new technology disk)
w) storage space for all the equipment. (ftp.dstc.edu.au was not a "tiny" sized
   box, well the cpu was :)
x) realising that your personal linux mirror that you setup so you could
   re-install linux etc when ever you wanted, has grown into a logistic
   nightmare, more than you could have possibly dreamed. (that is both good
   and bad :)
z) Telling people that the ride has ended, and fielding [Q]'s as to
   why is it gone?, is it coming back?, Can I get a copy of the data so
   I can be the main archive?, Where do I get Quake from now? Can I run it
   on my pentium that I have spare .. it has a 2gb disk free on it you know :)
   Are you selling the old hardware? What is happening to the old machine?
   Are the disks for sale? Why weren't we given more notice? Why are we
   not given an explanation? ...

btw ... the above is *not* why it shutdown, but of course .. it is a
        contributing factor.

So .. read the above ... and next time you are using a real neato ftp site,
send the admin a "thank-you" note ... Trust me .. it helps.

For-sale: One well used soap-box, many owners .. but only stood on by
little old sysadmins who did there backups on sundays.

David ;-)
--
 _--_|\  David Conran,                       Voice: +61-7-3365-3254
/      * Systems Administrator               Fax:   +61-7-3365-1477
\_.--._/ Department of Mathematics,          Email: lucifer@maths.uq.edu.au
      v  The University of Queensland, 4072 "Reach out and grep someone"