InstantMirror Project: Google Summer of Code 2009

[Warren Togami]

Arthur Pemberton wrote:
>> I disagree with this assessment. IntelligentMirror has turned into quite an
>> interesting project. It's gone well beyond its original scope as a caching
>> mechanism for packages. There's no point in being rude about it.
> 
> Wasn't the orignal idea his as well? I thought he was simply hateful
> of his own idea. Happens to me all the time.
> 

The original InstantMirror was an attempt to make a reverse proxy server 
suitable for a yum repository.  I quickly decided that approach was a 
dead-end architecturally then got busy on other things.

https://fedorahosted.org/fedora-infrastructure/browser/scripts/proxy-mirror
I ended up making a really simple squid-based solution that works just 
fine with standard squid.conf options.  Various folks have been using 
this solution for HTTP-only caching mirrors in production for a while 
now, mostly for local area network mirrors in branch offices or homes.

The IntelligentMirror guy took that original idea then went off in his 
own direction.  He asked me to be involved last year, but I was 
disinterested because his web page was confusing, and what I could 
figure out I believed to be the wrong direction.  I fail to see how 
intelligentmirror's squid redirector plugin is any improvement over 
standard squid.conf options.  Something positive came out of this 
though, it seems he learned skills and eventually implemented 
videocache, which is useful.

https://fedorahosted.org/InstantMirror/wiki/ExistingRepositoryReplicationMethods
Folks have never been fully satisfied with squid HTTP-only reverse 
caching proxy.  A full mirror wants real directories that can be served 
over multiple protocols or copied.  I have thus been thinking about how 
to combine the benefits of the traditional rsync mirror with the 
robustness of an on-demand caching mirror.

https://fedorahosted.org/InstantMirror/
The new InstantMirror proposal solves these problems.  Rik van Riel and 
I brainstormed these details back on November 26th, 2008, but I haven't 
had the time to write it all down until now.  Several students have been 
bugging me in the last week to write this up for Google SoC 2009.  Here 
it goes.  If we can make this proposal work it will be an awesome step 
forward.

Warren Togami
wtogami at redhat.com