Mirror: Quick Start Guide for the Impatient

 If you are NOT impatient what you should do is:


  1. Get the latest version of mirror from:
     ftp://sunsite.org.uk/packages/mirror/mirror.tar.gz
     ftp://sunsite.org.uk/packages/mirror/mirror.zip

  2. Read the mirror documentation to be found at:
     http://sunsite.org.uk/packages/mirror/

But if you are reading this then you are probably too impatient so please
read on:

  1. Get the latest version of mirror (see above) an extract it into a
     suitable directory (e.g. $HOME/mirror or c:\mirror).

  2. Check whether Perl is installed on the machine you are about to install
     mirror on.  If it isn't then either get your support staff to install
     perl or wander round http://www.perl.com/ and pull back a suitable copy
     of perl and install it.

  3. Run
              perl install.pl here
     If you want to install mirror as a command available to everyone on
     your system thats harder and you'll have to read the full
     documentation.  But for most users it is enough to run mirror from the
     directory you extracted it into.

  4. Edit the mirror.defaults to customise it for you system. You should
     probably change:
                 hostname
                 local_dir
                 remote_password
                 mail_to

  5. Create a file, using the name of the site as the file name, in the
     packages directory for each site that you want to mirror.
                 e.g. packages/ftp.some_useful_site.com

  6. Edit the package file for each site you want to mirror

     package=<package name>
             comment=<something to remind you what it is your mirroring>
             site=ftp.some_useful_site.com
             # where to start pulling files back from
             remote_dir=/pub
             # where to put the files on your machine
             local_dir=/public/Mirrors/ftp.some_useful_site.com/pub
             #
             # If you are under Wind*ws then use a line like this instead:
             #       local_dir=c:\tmp\mirror
             #


     Keep <package name> simple like just mirror or FTP-Copier avoid spaces
     and non-alphanumerics as much as possible.

  7. Test mirror to see what it would do
                     mirror -n packages/ftp.some_useful_site.com

  8. Run mirror for real.  I suggest the first time you do
                     mirror -d packages/ftp.some_useful_site.com
     so you can see what mirror is actually doing.  If it appears to work OK
     then you can drop the -d for future runs.