[tex-live] Off topic: copying tlnet

Mojca Miklavec mojca.miklavec.lists at gmail.com
Tue Nov 2 16:26:01 CET 2010


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;
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?

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).

Mojca


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