MirrorKwikis
Here are some helpful kwikis for obtaining Linux and other Free/Libre Open Source Software (FLOSS) from a "mirror" site.
Be sure to also check the ArchLUG Kwiki page for mirror site kwikis that may be specific to your distribution of Linux.
Some words about Security and Mirrors
A "mirror" sites is called such, as it claims to "mirror" or provide legal copies of freely available Free/Libre Open Source Software (FLOSS). Many mirrors are recognized by the original or primary (or canonical) source for the software, and are often referred to as "official" mirrors, and are typically listed on the origin website.
When downloading software from a "mirror" site, official or not, you may want to utilize additional (out-of-band) means to verify that what you download is, in fact, an identical copy of what you think you are downloading. In other words, "Trust, but verify" is a prudent course of action if you are concerned about the security or trust in where you obtain your software.
Examples of this are obtaining MD5 digest checksums of the downloaded material from another source (such as the primary site), and verifying that the MD5 digest checksum of what you've downloadeded is in fact, identical to what the primary site claims. Another example would be to verify the GPG or PGP digital signatures for the files in question, or a combination of these two mechanisms (such as a short message containing the MD5 digest that has been signed by the author/publisher/distributor).
For software that is of paramount security, or where none of the mirror sites, official or unofficial, meet your security requirements, you can always seek to obtain a license and a copy of the source code directly from the author/copyright holder to meet whatever requirements you can mutually agree upon.
What's in the 'Net neighborhood?
Some geographically close (to St. Louis, Missouri, USA), usually accessible fast mirror sites:
WU Archive
http://wuarchive.wustl.edu/ is the file archive of Washington University in St. Louis. They host a variety of files, including mirrors of various open-source projects such as the Linux kernel, the GNU Project, and the Debian Project.
Wuarchive was established in 1988 and is rumored at one point to have been involved in 15% of all Internet traffic. That's not true any more, but Wuarchive still has plenty to offer.
Yes, wuarchive is one of the grand-daddy of Internet mirroring sites. And it happens to live right in our backyard. Hopefully, your !ISP's "peering contracts" won't be routing your packets to Chicago, Denver, Dallas, or MAE-EAST or MAE-WEST just to get to the Central West End of St. Louis.
However, their measly 181GB of storage are no match for the ginormous 250GB of the ArchLUG Mirror! 
Download is available using two protocols: HTTP, and FTP. Sorry, no RSYNC.
- Operating Systems
- Linux Kernel
Argonne National Labs
MCS Public Software Mirror
http://mirror.mcs.anl.gov/ is a public software mirror operated by the Mathematics and Computer Science Division of Argonne National Laboratory. Download is available using three protocols: HTTP, FTP, and RSYNC.
- Operating Systems
- Linux Kernel
- Distributions
- Debian and AMD64, Fedora, Gentoo Mandrake ISO, RedHat, Ubuntu, SuSE, SuSE people, YellowDog
- Other
- Apache, Cygwin, GNU FTP, MySQL ,Mirror software, NSF Middleware Initiative, OpenSSH, PVFS, Samba, XFree86
Bielefeld University, Germany
http://mirrors.mathematik.uni-bielefeld.de/ is a public software mirror operated by the Mathematics departement of Bielefeld University in Germany. Download is available using three protocols: HTTP, FTP, and RSYNC.
rsync:mirrors.mathematik.uni-bielefeld.de:/pub/linux/suse
GWDG, Germany
http://ftp.gwdg.de/pub/ is a public software mirror operated by GWDG, which is a corporate computing center for the Max Plank Institutes and the University of Göttingen, Germany. Download is available using three protocols: HTTP, FTP, and RSYNC.
- Operating Systems
- FreeBSD, Linux Kernel
- Distributions
- Debian, Knoppix, Gnoppix, Gentoo, Mandrake, RedHat, RockLinux, Slackware, SuSE, Ximian
- Other
- KDE, OpenOffice, and many more.
|
|