Chris G Demetriou said:
> 
> > 	I've been thinking lately that it might be a good idea to contact 
> > people at [ ... ]
> 
> ftp.NetBSD.ORG is the primary NetBSD distribution site.
> Places (e.g. gatekeeper) mirror NetBSD software from there.
> 
> Instead, you should do what you can to get the software you want to
> see distributed put up on ftp.netbsd.org.  Note, however, that there
> are constraints on what gets put up.

> Also, binary packages and similar things have to go through the
> 'correct' mechanisms to get into the packages tree, and there's a
> contact to go through for getting them up.

> In other words, there's plenty of disk space, the mirror network is
> already established, _and_ it's the "correct" distribution site.

	At this point, mirroring ftp.uni-regensburg.de:/pub/NetBSD-Amiga 
takes 200Mb at herb.kuru.com.  This is _not_ a complete mirror.  
Eliminating the bin-dist/ tree would make that 20M less (I only have the 
most recent), but mirroring the OLD/ trees and other software that I 
don't keep on herb would add more than that.  In addition, the size of the 
files grows by at least 5M per month.  Can ftp.netbsd.org keep up with that?

	In addition, the directory structure on ftp.netbsd.org isn't 
adequate for all of the NetBSD-Amiga files.  Clumping all m68k8k files 
won't work for amiga specific experimental kernels, patches, drivers and 
Xservers, nor would it be proper to put all of the tools, packages, X11 
packages and binaries into packages/binaries/NetBSD-1.0/m68k8k.

	Judging from the usage of my machine, having more than one site 
for NetBSD-Amiga files in North America would be a wasteful convenience.  
An Australian site would be a good idea, though.

	NetBSD-Amiga already has an established and well maintained 
port-specific site, and IMHO, that's a Good Thing (tm).  It preserves 
resources (disk space, bandwidth, and user limits) at netbsd.org, and 
distributes maintenance time.  It also avoids the "constraints on what gets 
put up".

	I think it is a good idea to merge the two archives.  But can 
ftp.netbsd.org support that reasonably?  At the moment, I doubt it.

	Given that the current NetBSD-Amiga archives are superior to the 
archives currently on ftp.netbsd.org and that there needs to be a 
NetBSD-Amiga archive in the US or Cananda, it follows that either someone 
in the US or Canada should mirror ftp.uni-regensburg.de or that the 
current NetBSD-Amiga archives should be integrated into the archives on 
sun-lamp.
	While it would be nice if the solution to this problem were the 
'correct' one, without some changes at netbsd.org, the 'incorrect' 
solution is more useful to the Amiga community.


//  Stephen Champion                   Software Eng, *ix Admin, OS Design
//  schampion@hampshire.edu            Hampshire College - Amherst, MA
//  steve@herb.kuru.com                Amiga 3000/25    NetBSD 1.0
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