NAME
debmirror - Debian partial mirror script, with ftp, http, hftp or rsync
and package pool support
SYNOPSIS
debmirror [options] <mirrordir>
DESCRIPTION
This program downloads and maintains a partial local Debian mirror. It
can mirror any combination of architectures, distributions, and
sections. Files are transferred by ftp, and package pools are fully
supported. It also does locking and updates trace files.
To support package pools, this program mirrors in three steps.
1. download Packages and Sources files
First it downloads all Packages and Sources files for the subset of
Debian it was instructed to get.
2. clean up unknown files
Any files and directories on the local mirror that are not in the
list are removed.
3. download everything else
The Packages and Sources files are scanned, to build up a list of
all the files they refer to. A few other miscellaneous files are
added to the list. Then the program makes sure that each file in
the list is present on the local mirror and is up-to-date, using
file size (and optionally md5sum) checks. Any necessary files are
downloaded.
OPTIONS
<mirrordir>
This required (unless defined in a configuration file) parameter
specifies where the local mirror directory is. If the directory
does not exist, it will be created. Be careful; telling this
program that your home directory is the mirrordir is guaranteed to
replace your home directory with a Debian mirror!
--progress -p
Displays progress bars as files are downloaded.
--verbose -v
Displays progress between file downloads.
--debug
Enables verbose debug output, including ftp protocol dump.
--dry-run
Simulate a mirror run. This will still download the meta files to
the ./.temp working directory, but won’t replace the old meta
files, won’t download debs and source files and only simulates
cleanup.
--skip-installer foo[,bar,..]
Don’t download debian-installer files for the specified
distribution.
--help
Display a usage summary.
--host=remotehost -h
Specify the remote host to mirror from. Defaults to
’ftp.debian.org’, you are strongly encouraged to find a closer
mirror.
--root=directory -r directory
Specifies the directory on the remote host that is the root of the
Debian archive. Defaults to "debian", which will work for most
mirrors. The root directory has a ./dists subdirectory.
--method=ftp|hftp|http|rsync -e
Specify the method to download files. Currently, supported methods
are ftp, hftp (ftp over http proxy), http or rsync.
Note: starting with version 1.1 it is no longer needed to add a ’:’
prefix for the root directory.
--passive
Download in passive mode.
--user=remoteusername -u
Specify the remote user name to use to log to the remote host.
Helpful when dealing with brain damaged proxy servers. Defaults to
anonymous.
--passwd=remoteuserpassword
Specify the remote user password to use to log into the remote ftp
host. It is used with --user and defaults to anonymous@.
--proxy=http://user:pass@url:port/
Specifies the http proxy (like Squid) to use for http and hftp
method.
--dist=foo[,bar,..] -d foo
Specify the distribution (etch, lenny, squeeze, sid) of Debian to
mirror. This switch may be used multiple times, and multiple
distributions may be specified at once, separated by commas. Using
the links (stable, testing, unstable) does not have the expected
results but you may add those links manually. Defaults to mirroring
sid.
--omit-suite-symlinks
With this option set, debmirror will not create the
’suite -> codename’ symlink. This is needed for example when
mirroring archived Debian releases as they will all have either
’stable’ or ’oldstable’ as suite in their Release files.
--section=foo[,bar,..] -s foo
Specify the section of Debian to mirror. Defaults to
main,contrib,non-free,main/debian-installer.
--arch=foo[,bar,..] -a foo
Specify the architectures to mirror. The default is --arch=i386.
Specifying --arch=none will mirror no archs.
--adddir directory
Also download Packages and Sources files from the specified
directory on the remote host (the directory is relative to the root
of the Debian archive). This feature is now obsolete and may be
removed in a future release.
--rsync-extra=foo[,bar,..]
Allows to also mirror files from a number of directories that are
not part of the package archive itself. Debmirror will always use
rsync for the transfer of these files, irrespective of what
transfer method is specified in the --method option.
This option can therefore not be used if your remote mirror does
not support rsync, or if the mirror needs a different --root option
for rsync than for the main transfer method specified with
--method. Excluding individual files in the directories is not
supported.
The following values are supported.
doc
Download all files and subdirectories in ./doc directory, and all
README files in the root directory of the archive.
indices
Download all files and subdirectories in ./indices directory.
Note that this directory can contain some rather large files;
don’t include this type unless you know you need these files.
tools
Download all files and subdirectories in ./tools directory.
trace
Download the remote mirror’s trace files for the archive
(./project/trace/*).
If specified, the update of trace files will be done at the
beginning of the mirror run; the other types are done near the end.
This switch may be used multiple times, and multiple values may be
specified at once, separated by comma’s; unknown values are
ignored.
--di-dist=dists | foo[,bar,..]
Mirror "current" Debian Installer images for the specified dists.
See further the section "Mirroring Debian Installer images" below.
--di-arch=arches | foo[,bar,..]
Mirror "current" Debian Installer images for the specified
architectures. See further the section "Mirroring Debian Installer
images" below.
--source
Include source in the mirror (default).
--nosource
Do not include source.
--i18n
Additionally download Translation-<lang>.bz2 files, which contain
translations of package descriptions. Selection of specific
translations is possible using the --include and --exclude options.
--getcontents
Additionally download Contents.<arch>.gz files. Note that these
files can be relatively big and can change frequently, especially
for the testing and unstable suites. Use of the available diff
files is strongly recommended (see the --diff option).
--md5sums -m
Use md5sums to determine if files on the local mirror that are the
correct size actually have the correct content. Not enabled by
default, because it is too paranoid, and too slow.
When the state cache is used, debmirror will only check md5sums
during runs where the cache has expired or been invalidated, so it
is worth considering to use these two options together.
--ignore-missing-release
Don’t fail if the Release file is missing.
--ignore-release-gpg
Don’t fail if the Release.gpg file is missing. If the file does
exist, it is mirrored and verified, but any errors are ignored.
--ignore=regex
Never delete any files whose filenames match the regex. May be used
multiple times.
--exclude=regex
Never download any files whose filenames match the regex. May be
used multiple times.
--include=regex
Don’t exclude any files whose filenames match the regex. May be
used multiple times.
--exclude-deb-section=regex
Never download any files whose Debian Section (games, doc, oldlibs,
science, ...) match the regex. May be used multiple times.
--limit-priority=regex
Limit download to files whose Debian Priority (required, extra,
optional, ...) match the regex. May be used multiple times.
--timeout=seconds -t
Specifies the timeout to use for network operations (either FTP or
rsync). Set this to a higher value if you experience failed
downloads. Defaults to 300 seconds.
--max-batch=number
Download at most max-batch number of files (and ignore rest).
--rsync-batch=number
Download at most number of files with each rsync call and then
loop.
--rsync-options=options
Specify alternative rsync options to be used. Default options are
"-aL --partial". Care must be taken when specifying alternative
options not to disrupt operations, it’s best to only add to those
options.
The most likely option to add is "--bwlimit=x" to avoid saturating
the bandwidth of your link.
--postcleanup
Clean up the local mirror but only after mirroring is complete and
only if there was no error. This is the default.
--cleanup
Do clean up any unknown files and directories on the local mirror
(see step 2 above).
--nocleanup
Do not clean up the local mirror after mirroring is complete.
--skippackages
Don’t re-download Packages and Sources files. Useful if you know
they are up-to-date.
--diff=use|mirror|none
If --diff=use is specified and the Release file contains entries
for diff files, then debmirror will attempt to use them to update
Packages, Sources and Contents files (which can significantly
reduce the download size for meta files), but will not include them
in the mirror. This is the default behavior and avoids having time
consuming diff files for a fast local mirror.
Specifying --diff=mirror does the same as ’use’, but will also
include the downloaded diff files in the local mirror. Specify
--diff=none to completely ignore diff files.
Note that if rsync is used as method to download files and the
archive being mirrored has "rsyncable" gzipped meta files, then
using --diff=none may be the most efficient way to download them.
See the gzip(1) man page for information about its rsyncable
option.
--gzip-options=options
Specify alternative options to be used when calling gzip to
compress meta files after applying diffs. The default options are
"-9 -n --rsyncable" which corresponds with the options used to gzip
meta files for the main Debian archive.
These options may need to be modified if the md5sum of the file as
gzipped by debmirror does not match the md5sum listed in the
Release file (which will result in the gzipped file being
downloaded unnecessarily after diffs were successfully applied).
--state-cache-days=number
Save the state of the mirror in a cache file between runs. The
cache will expire after the specified number of days, at which time
a full check and cleanup of the mirror will be done. While the
cache is valid, debmirror will trust that the mirror is consistent
with this cache.
The cache is only used for files that have a unique name, i.e.
binary packages and source files. If a mirror update fails for any
reason, the cache will be invalidated and the next run will include
a full check.
Main advantage of using the state cache is that it avoids a large
amount of disk access while checking which files need to be
fetched. It may also reduce the time required for mirror updates.
--ignore-small-errors
Normally debmirror will report an error if any deb files or sources
fail to download and refuse to update the meta data to an
inconsistent mirror. Normally this is a good things as it indicates
something went wrong during download and should be retried. But
sometimes the upstream mirror actually is broken. Specifying
--ignore-small-errors causes debmirror to ignore missing or broken
deb and source files but still be pedantic about checking meta
files.
--allow-dist-rename
The directory name for a dist should be equal to its Codename and
not to a Suite. If the local mirror currently has directories named
after Suites, debmirror can rename them automatically. An existing
symlink codename -> suite will be removed, but debmirror will
automatically create a new symlink suite -> codename (immediately
after moving meta files in place). This conversion should only be
needed once.
USING DEBMIRROR
Using regular expressions in options
Various options accept regular expressions that can be used to tune
what is included in the mirror. They can be any regular expression
valid in perl, which also means that extended syntax is standard. Make
sure to anchor regular expressions appropriately: this is not done by
debmirror.
The --include and --exclude options can be combined. This combination
for example will, if the --i18n option is used, exclude all Translation
files, except for the ones for Portuguese (pt) and Brazillian (pt_BR):
--exclude='/Translation-.*\.bz2$' --include='/Translation-pt.*\.bz2$'
Mirroring Debian Installer images
Debmirror will only mirror the "current" images that are on the remote
mirror. At least one of the options --di-dist or --di-arch must be
passed to enable mirroring of the images.
The special values "dists" resp. "arches" can be used to tell debmirror
to use the same dists and architectures for D-I images as for the
archive, but it is also possible to specify different values. If either
option is not set, it will default to the same values as for the
archive.
If you wish to create custom CD images using for example debian-cd, you
will probably also want add the option "--rsync-extra=doc,tools".
Limitations
There are no progress updates displayed for D-I images.
Archive size
The tables in the file /usr/share/doc/debmirror/archive_size give an
indication of the space needed to mirror the Debian archive. They are
particularly useful if you wish to set up a partial mirror. Only the
size of source and binary packages is included. You should allow for
around 1-4 GB of meta data (in ./dists/<dist>) per suite (depending in
your settings). Plus whatever space is needed for extra directories
(e.g. tools, doc) you wish to mirror.
The tables also show how much additional space is required if you add a
release on top of its predecessor. Note that the additional space
needed for testing and (to a lesser extend) unstable varies during the
development cycle of a release. The additional space needed for testing
is zero immediately after a stable release and grows from that time
onwards.
Note Debmirror keeps an extra copy of all meta data. This is necessary
to guarantee that the local mirror stays consistent while debmirror is
running.
EXAMPLES
Simply make a mirror in /srv/mirror/debian, using all defaults (or the
settings defined in debmirror.conf):
debmirror /srv/mirror/debian
Make a mirror of i386 and sparc binaries, main only, and include both
unstable and testing versions of Debian; download from
’ftp.kernel.org’:
debmirror -a i386,sparc -d sid -d etch -s main --nosource \
-h ftp.nl.debian.org --progress $HOME/mirror/debian
Make a mirror using rsync (rsync server is ’ftp.debian.org::debian’),
excluding the section ’debug’ and the package ’foo-doc’:
debmirror -e rsync $HOME/mirror/debian --exclude='/foo-doc_' \
--exclude-deb-section='^debug$'
FILES
/etc/debmirror.conf
~/.debmirror.conf
Debmirror will look for the presence of these files and load them
in the indicated order if they exist.
See the example in /usr/share/doc/debmirror/examples for syntax.
~/.gnupg/trustedkeys.gpg
Debmirror uses gpgv to verify Release and Release.gpg using the
default keying ~/.gnupg/trustedkeys.gpg. This can be changed by
exporting GNUPGHOME resulting in $GNUPGHOME/trustedkeys.gpg being
used.
To add the right key to this keyring you can import it from the
debian keyring (in case of the debian archive) using:
gpg --keyring /usr/share/keyrings/debian-archive-keyring.gpg --export \
| gpg --no-default-keyring --keyring trustedkeys.gpg --import
or download the key from a keyserver:
gpg --no-default-keyring --keyring trustedkeys.gpg \
--keyserver keyring.debian.org --recv-keys <key ID>
The <key ID> can be found in the gpgv error message in debmirror:
gpgv: Signature made Tue Jan 23 09:07:53 2007 CET using DSA key ID 2D230C5F
COPYRIGHT
This program is copyright 2001 by Joey Hess <joeyh@debian.org>, under
the terms of the GNU GPL (either version 2 of the licence or, at your
option, any later version), copyright 2001-2002 by Joerg Wendland
<joergland@debian.org>, copyright 2003-2007 by Goswin von Brederlow
<goswin-v-b@web.de> and copyright 2009 by Frans Pop <fjp@debian.org>.
The author disclaims any responsibility for any mangling of your
system, unexpected bandwidth usage bills, meltdown of the Debian mirror
network, etc, that this script may cause. See NO WARRANTY section of
GPL.
AUTHOR
Current maintainer:
Frans Pop <fjp@debian.org>
Previous authors:
Joey Hess <joeyh@debian.org> (original author)
Joerg Wendland <joergland@debian.org>
Goswin von Brederlow <goswin-v-b@web.de>
MOTTO
Waste bandwith -- put a partial mirror on your laptop today!