We want to be "kinder and gentler" to the Gentoo mirrors. I have 2 machines; my main machine and a 1999 450 mhz PIII as "hot backup". I try to keep the backup up to date with apps duplicating the main machine, so that if the main machine dies, I can restore some data from backups and be running in a couple of hours.
The procedure for "emerge --rsync" using the main machine as server is simple. I'll now present my solution for /usr/portage/distfiles. This obviously works best for machines with a similar set of apps. Run emerge update on the server machine first. It'll get the tarballs it needs, and they'll be sitting in /usr/portage/distfiles, waiting to be served out to other machines in your LAN that need the same tarballs. I use the "boa" webserver. It's lighweight, simple to configure, and you can run multiple instances simultaneously. That is the best way to separate privileges for different clients. *IMPORTANT* Gentoo's emerge command always looks in the "distfiles" folder below whatever URL it's given for a mirror. E.g. if I specify "http://www.bad.example.com"; as the mirror to use, emerge will look in "http://www.bad.example.com/distfiles";. The "Alias" declaration in boa.conf handles this. The secondary machine's /etc/make.conf has the line... GENTOO_MIRRORS="http://192.168.123.252:1024 ftp://ftp.ndlug.nd.edu/pub/gentoo/ http://mirror.datapipe.net/gentoo"; so it'll try my main machine (192.168.123.252 on port 1024) first. I invoke the portage server dedicated boa with the command... boa -c /root/.boa/portage/ which implies that the config file to use is /root/.boa/portage/boa.conf My /root/.boa/portage/boa.conf currently looks like so... Port 1024 Listen 192.168.123.252 User nobody Group nogroup ErrorLog /var/log/boa/portage/error_log AccessLog /var/log/boa/portage/access_log DocumentRoot /usr/portage/distfiles/ UseLocaltime DirectoryMaker /usr/lib/boa/boa_indexer KeepAliveMax 1000 KeepAliveTimeout 10 MimeTypes /etc/boa/mime.types DefaultType text/plain Alias /distfiles /usr/portage/distfiles Note that in addition to using a dedicated I/O port, the "portage instance" of boa also has its own log files. -- Walter Dnes <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> In linux /sbin/init is Job #1 My musings on technology and security at http://tech_sec.blog.ca -- [email protected] mailing list
