[tex-live] Off topic: copying tlnet

[George N. White III]

On Tue, Nov 2, 2010 at 12:26 PM, Mojca Miklavec
<mojca.miklavec.lists at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Mon, Nov 1, 2010 at 13:03, Robin Fairbairns
> <Robin.Fairbairns at cl.cam.ac.uk> wrote:
>> Lars Madsen <daleif at imf.au.dk> wrote:
>>
>>> Do we have a list of servers/mirrors offering rsync access?
>>
>> README.mirrors on ctan lists all addresses that we (ctan) know mirrors
>> to respond to.
>
> Today I have discovered that the mirror I have been using all the time
> (Wien) is currupted, so I wanted to try out rsync just for fun ...
>
> The first mirror that I have tried (the only one listed under Germany,
> rsync://ftp.fernuni-hagen.de/ctan/) doesn't work at all. Then I tried:
>
> sudo tlmgr option repository
> rsync://rsync.dante.ctan.org/CTAN/systems/texlive/tlnet
>
> But using rsync that way apparently doesn't work, or at least it
> doesn't work here.
>
> So I have two question:
>
> 1.) Is there any list similar to
> http://miktex.org/pkg/Repositories.aspx that would also check health
> of repositories? The file http://www.ctan.org/tex-archive/CTAN.sites
> apparently doesn't really help me since
> a) it doesn't say anything about the health of repositories - the
> first one that I have used for a long time is currupted, the second
> (that I tried) doesn't work at all;

It is not easy to monitor the health of repositories and if nobody is
monitoring the site for problems then it is unlikely there will be
anyone to deal with the issue when it is discovered.   Maybe
there should be something like WOT for archive sites where you
could filter ratings by age, so you would look for site with recent high scores.

> b) reading this:
> On Mon, Nov 1, 2010 at 13:18, Robin Fairbairns wrote:
>> (after
>> all, a huge preponderance of uploads go to the least capable server,
>> with only a constant few using cam or dante.)
> I realized that rsync.dante.ctan.org (if that is the same dante server
> that Robin is talking about) is not even listed on CTAN.sites; the
> only listed German rsync server is broken.
>
> 2.) When talking about "educating users to use rsync" ... I consider
> myself a "lover of rsync" (after all, the TeX installation that I
> provide is completely and only rsync-based), but still I have no idea
> how I could use rsync for updating TeX Live (provided that I don't
> want a second copy of "the whole CTAN" on my local hard drive as an
> intermediate repository). Can anyone explain me how to use rsync for
> TeX Live?

You do have to mirror a big chunk of the archive, but you can use
excludes to avoid copying architectures you don't want (in
particular, the large mactex package).  See Norbert's previous
post in this thread for an example.  Mine is similar but adds more
excludes for binaries I don't use.

> I somehow have an impression that rsync servers are well-hidden in
> comparison to http/ftp/svn (it always takes me some time to figure out
> how to fetch files from TeX Live or from CTAN's most up-to-date
> server).

At a given site, each protocol may different top-level directories
(and may be selective about the directories that are served), so
you need to look at the master list.

-- 
George N. White III <aa056 at chebucto.ns.ca>
Head of St. Margarets Bay, Nova Scotia