---
name: "mirror-master"
section: "1"
platform: "linux"
package: "mirror"
version: "2.9-55"
release: "Debian 6.0 (Squeeze)"
platforms: ["linux"]
url: "https://new.carta.tech/mirror-master"
---

# mirror-master(1)

mirror master

## NAME

mm - mirror master

## SYNOPSIS

**mm** **\[flags\] \[package-files\]**

## DESCRIPTION

**mm** is the mirror master.  It runs multiple calls to **mirror** in parallel and handles locking and minimal retry times.

As with **mirror,** **mm** is a package written in Perl.

**mm** presumes that all the package details are stored in a directory called packages.  All the packages for a given site must be in a file whose name is the same as that of the site.  So in packages/sunsite.org.uk will be all the package details for the host sunsite.org.uk.

## OPTIONS

- **-t**

  Ignore the minimal retry timers.

- **-o site:package**

  Only mirror the given site:package.

- **-debug**

  Enable debugging.  If this argument is given more than once the debugging level will increase.  Currently the maximum useful level is four.

- **-s**

  Enable status debugging.  This will print out the status of any subprocess as it is spawned or as it exits.

## CONFIGURATION FILE

The configuration file is parsed as a series of statements. Blank lines and lines beginning with a hash are ignored. There are are two kinds of statements, controls and site:package details.

Control statements are of the form:

-

  *keyword***=***value*

You can add whitespace around the equals.

Here is a list of the keywords and their values, any defaults are given inside square brackets:

- *home*

  Directory that mm chdirs to before doing any work. \[''\]

- *max*

  Maximum number of mirrors that can be running in parallel at any one time \['6'\]

- *mirror*

  This is the way to call mirror.  Any occurence of $args, $package or $site is replace with the appropriate entry from the package. Any $pkg is replaced with a version of $package with all characters that cause problems in filenames converted to underscore. The default is: exec ./mirror \\$args -p'\\$package' packages/\\$site \> logs/\\$site:\\$pkg 2\>&1 \[''\]

- *cmd*

  Run the given command. This can occur multiple times. \[''\]

- *cmdin*

  Run the given command and use its output as mm input. This can occur multiple times. \[''\]

- *skip*

  Skip the given site:package when it occurs. \[''\]

In addition to control statements there are also package details. Each package details statement is of the form:

```
site:package min-restart-last-ok min-restart-last-notok mirror-args
```

The site and package fields are matched against those in the packages. A mirror will only be run to this site:package if the last mirror run was more than **min** hours out. The  **min-restart-last-ok** limit will be used if the last call to mirror was successful.  If the mirror call failed then **min-restart-last-notok** will be used.

## EXAMPLES

Here is a simple **mm** input file to manage mirroring two packages.

```
home=/public/mirror
ftp.cl.cam.ac.uk:JIPS-nrs 20 20
hcrl.open.ac.uk:hcrl-psion 20 20
```

More usually the auxilly program **pkgs\_to\_mmin** will be used to automatically convert the contents of the packages directory into the site:package statements.

```
home=/public/mirror
cmdin=./pkgs_to_mmin packages/*
```

## AUTHOR

Written by Lee McLoughlin \<lmjm@icparc.ic.ac.uk\>.