2013-06-03 In Site news.

If you would like to mirror all or a subset of kernel.org git repositories, please use a tool we wrote for this purpose, called grokmirror. Grokmirror is git-aware and will create a complete mirror of kernel.org repositories and keep them automatically updated with no further involvement on your part.

Grokmirror works by keeping track of repositories being updated by downloading and comparing the master manifest file. This file is only downloaded if it's newer on the server, and only the repositories that have changed will be updated via "git remote update".

You can read more about grokmirror by reading the README file.

Obtaining grokmirror If grokmirror is not yet packaged for your distribution, you can obtain it from a git repository: git clone git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/utils/grokmirror/grokmirror.git In additon to git, you will need to install the following python dependencies on your mirror server: GitPython

Setting up a kernel.org mirror It is recommended that you create a dedicated "mirror" user that will own all the content and run all the cron jobs. It is generally discouraged to run this as user "root". The default repos.conf already comes pre-configured for kernel.org. We reproduce the minimal configuration here: [kernel.org] site = git://git.kernel.org manifest = http://git.kernel.org/manifest.js.gz default_owner = Grokmirror User # # Where are we going to put the mirror on our disk? toplevel = /var/lib/git/mirror # # Where do we store our own manifest? Usually in the toplevel. mymanifest = /var/lib/git/mirror/manifest.js.gz # # Where do we put the logs? log = /var/log/mirror/kernelorg.log # # Log level can be "info" or "debug" loglevel = info # # To prevent multiple grok-pull instances from running at the same # time, we first obtain an exclusive lock. lock = /var/lock/mirror/kernelorg.lock # # Use shell-globbing to list the repositories you would like to mirror. # If you want to mirror everything, just say "*". Separate multiple entries # with newline plus tab. Examples: # # mirror everything: #include = * # # mirror just the main kernel sources: #include = /pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git # /pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/stable/linux-stable.git # /pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/next/linux-next.git # # mirror just git: #include = /pub/scm/git/* include = * # # This is processed after the include. If you want to exclude some specific # entries from an all-inclusive globbing above. E.g., to exclude all # linux-2.4 git sources: #exclude = */linux-2.4* exclude = Install this configuration file anywhere that makes sense in your environment. You'll need to make sure that the following directories (or whatever you changed them to) are writable by the "mirror" user: /var/lib/git/mirror

/var/log/mirror

/var/lock/mirror

Mirroring kernel.org git repositories Now all you need to do is to add a cronjob that will check the kernel.org mirror for updates. The following entry in /etc/cron.d/grokmirror.cron will check the mirror every 5 minutes: # Run grok-pull every 5 minutes as "mirror" user */5 * * * * mirror /usr/bin/grok-pull -p -c /etc/grokmirror/repos.conf (You will need to adjust the paths to the grok-pull command and to repos.conf accordingly to reflect your environment.) The initial run will take many hours to complete, as it will need to download about 50 GB of data.