Re: [INFRA] download.services.openoffice.org in danger

[Marcus (OOo)]

Am 04/10/2012 01:33 AM, schrieb Peter Pöml:
Hi Dave,
Am 13.03.2012 um 19:42 schrieb Dave Fisher:

Hi Peter,

Sorry for the delaying in responding directly to your generous offer.

sorry for the delay on my side as well.

On Mar 6, 2012, at 3:20 PM, Peter Pöml wrote:


Am 04.03.2012 um 23:43 schrieb Marcus (OOo):

Am 03/04/2012 08:02 PM, schrieb Dave Fisher:
With the Oracle infrastructure going away we are in danger of losing the legacy 
downloads and the root of the MirrorBrain network.

I haven't realised that this counts also for the download webserver. I thought 
for mail services only.

Is it definite that {download,updateext}.service.openoffice.org is going to be 
switched off - and when is it?

Also it turns out that the Extensions site uses the url 
updateexte.services.openoffice.org for updates and that url points to 
download.services.openoffice.org

I don't know the reason for the linking. But maybe it's because a few 
extensions are outsourced from the main repository due to their high load. See:

http://download.services.openoffice.org/files/extended/extensions/

/ExtensionUpdateService/check.Update is one of the most popular files - with 
around 5-10 requests per second.


SourceForge has asked to take control of updateexte.services.openoffice.org 
which makes sense.

Great.

What do we want to do about download.services.openoffice.org?

It can be switched to the alternative host which is hosted by MirrorBrain 
itself, so that this is used for serving downloads instead of the Oracle hosted 
service.

Please note however that my fallback of download.services.openoffice.org does 
not have all features. It has the mirror redirection (the essential), but does 
not serve cryptographic hashes for verification, no automatically generated 
torrents, no metalinks.

If you compare the following two URLs, you can note the differences:
http://download.services.openoffice.org/files/stable/3.3.0/OOo_3.3.0_Solaris_Sparc_install-wJRE_en-US.tar.gz.mirrorlist
http://openoffice.mirrorbrain.org/stable/3.3.0/OOo_3.3.0_Solaris_Sparc_install-wJRE_en-US.tar.gz.mirrorlist

Also, what's not visible, is that the fallback host doesn't count downloads.

Mirror selection and redirection are the same. But as you might know, large 
downloads benefit from means for download verification, which is why crypto 
hashes and metalinks/torrents are useful, especially affecting downloaders with 
not less-than-ideal connectivity.

To set up a full fallback, I am lacking the disk space, unfortunately. I don't 
have space for the file tree. (I would appreciate donations for running costs 
of disk space, or access to server, very much.)

But, no problem, there is the option of continuing by switching to my host as 
it is.

Given there is hardware, I could set up a successor for 
download.services.openoffice.org, respectively move it to a new home, if there 
is interest...

Well I hope there is! I know I am biased, because I'm the one who built 
download.services.openoffice.org, and spent some years with it. But I'd bet 
some money that nobody wants to go back to pre-MirrorBrain times, where the 
really close mirrors were always ignored when you downloaded OpenOffice.org...

See the file "http://www.openoffice.org/download/globalvars.js";. Just exchange the content for the 
"MIRROR_MIRRORBRAIN_URL" and "MIRROR_MIRRORBRAIN2_URL" variables.

Marcus


By the way, here's a disclaimer: I'm also the "head" behind LibreOffice's 
download system. Yes, if you might wonder: I am maintaining the download servers of both 
projects and have no problem with that :-)

Neither do I. The purpose is to preserve the legacy for those who still require 
access. Apache OO will use Apache Infrastructure and Mirrors (many the same) 
and having someone take responsibility for this legacy would be wonderful.

If you have successor hardware ready then the simple way to proceed is to change the dns 
for download.services.openoffice.org dns to point to your server. This server is then the 
"root" of the mirrorbrain network and you will be responsible for dealing with 
mirrors.

Well, not really, since the mirror network is "headless", I'm only redirecting 
an old state of the tree, without being the root of the network. I'd be the root of the 
network if mirrors would sync from me. But the mirrors have traditionally synced from 
another place. (For historical reasons, too lengthy to explain, 
download.services.openoffice.org hasn't been the root of the mirror network either.)

Wondering: download.services.openoffice.org was changed to point to my server I 
thought, but it's pointing to the Oracle server again now. Was it changed back?

Peter

IMHO the plan was to shutdown the "download.services.openoffice.org" as 
it is hosted by Oracle. Therefore the default downloads were stopped to 
go to this server but changed to your server.

However, it seems that the Oracle server is still working. Strange.

Marcus