Daemonic Dispatches

Portsnap mirrors

As a result of the rapidly increasing usage of Portsnap, I decided a few weeks ago that it was time to add more mirrors. In addition to the original mirrors provided by Eric Anderson (portsnap1) and LayeredTech (portsnap2, which also hosts freebsd-update files and my personal websites), there is now a European mirror provided by Thomas Vogt (portsnap3).

In order to allow users to a "nearby" mirror (at least if they are in North America or Europe) some new DNS entries have been added: If you edit your /etc/portsnap.conf file to include

SERVERNAME=us.portsnap.FreeBSD.org

portsnap will try the two US mirrors before trying the European mirror; similarly, a SERVERNAME of eu.portsnap.FreeBSD.org will cause it to try the European mirror first. Either way, portsnap will only fail if none of the three mirrors are available: These two new entries only indicate an order of preference between mirrors (aren't SRV records great?).

I'd like to add a fourth mirror somewhere in the vicinity of Japan if possible; I have been offered other mirrors in North America and Europe, but it would be nice to offer systems in that part of the world a closer mirror if I'm going to add a new mirror anyway. If you can offer such a mirror, please contact me.

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