How to become a mirror for the Apache Software Foundation

The Apache Software Foundation has mirror sites from all around the world, but we are always looking for more reliable and well connected sites that can help us distribute our software. We no longer encourage mirrors for the various Apache Software Foundation websites, since they have become too complicated to be easily replicated. Instead, we request mirrors that can aid in distributing the software itself by mirroring our main software distribution directory.

We have a few requirements for those wishing to run a mirror:

• At least 40 GB of available disk space. The current distribution directory is around 28 GB, but we wish to leave room for considerable expansion.
• You must carry the complete site, with no local changes - particularly HEADER.html and README.html files must not be altered or removed.
• You must do an update-check at least once a day and preferably between 2 and 4 times per day.
• You must subscribe to the mailing list for mirror maintainers (see below).

In addition, we require that you run the Apache HTTP Server version 1.3.26 or 2.0.43 or later and use the following configuration for your web mirror to allow all the features of our download site to function optimally:

<Directory /path/to/mirror>
  IndexOptions FancyIndexing NameWidth=* FoldersFirst \
     ScanHTMLTitles DescriptionWidth=*
  HeaderName HEADER.html
  ReadmeName README.html
  AllowOverride FileInfo Indexes
  Options Indexes SymLinksIfOwnerMatch
</Directory>

If you do not wish to add FollowSymlinks or SymLinksIfOwnerMatch to your Apache configuration, please use the -L option instead of the -l option on the rsync command line below.

We do add ftp mirrors to our list, but we much prefer http mirrors and we select only http mirrors as "preferred" mirrors.

We support only rsync for updating mirrors.

You can find details on rsync at http://rsync.samba.org/. You might want to call it using the following arguments, for example:

rsync -rtlzv --delete rsync.apache.org::apache-dist /local/path/to/mirror

If your mirror is in or near Europe, please replace rsync.apache.org with rsync.eu.apache.org in the above line.

If your mirror is in or near North America, please replace rsync.apache.org with rsync.us.apache.org in the above line.

Once the site is configured, tested, and updating consistently, you should subscribe to the mirror maintainers mailing list by sending mail to "mirrors-subscribe@apache.org".

Then you can provide us with details of your mirror by submitting them to our Issue Tracker. You'll need to sign up for an account, then create a new issue in project "Infrastructure" with component "Mirrors".

Please include the following information in the Description field:

• URL of mirror
• Country where the mirror is located
• Contact email address
• Update frequency
• Rsync repository used
• Approximate bandwidth
• I have configured my HTTP server as requested (yes/no)
• I have subscribed to the mirror maintainers mailing list (yes/no)

If you would like to have a logo for your mirror displayed when your mirror is selected, please include the URL to a GIF/JPG/PNG file with a size of no more than 100x34 pixels. You must host the image on your site and we will inline it from our pages. Also include a URL for your site where we should send people who click on the logo.

Thanks!