On 7/23/21 11:29 PM, Roger Dingledine wrote:
On Fri, Jul 23, 2021 at 10:40:30AM -0600, Dave Warren wrote:
https://2019.www.torproject.org/docs/running-a-mirror.html.en indicates that the website and distribution directory currently require 30GB and to expect up to 50GB.
dist is currently over 80GB. Is this normal/expected?
Yes. It depends mainly on how many versions of Tor Browser are on dist at once, and with a stable version and an alpha version, and new releases coming out, sometimes there are quite a few versions published at once.
Just wondering if this is temporary, or if I should provision a bit more disk space?
It's worse than that -- the running-a-mirror page that you point to is on the old website, and there is no equivalent on the new website. We have no plans currently for how to make good use of third-party website mirrors. We used to send them to people with gettor (for censored users who can't reach our main websites), but for now putting content on github and archive.org seems like an easier more scalable approach.
So I think we have the old mirror operators in limbo wondering if it's useful to continue.
Is it? Should we shut this mirror thing down more thoroughly? Or try to rescue it to be useful in a new way?
As you said, github, gitlab, archive.org are probably more scalable, and maybe harder to block (it's practically domain fronting). Not only that, but they aren't run by random people. And the Tor Project controls updates... for good... or bad [1].
I've talked to you before about mirrors, on IRC, I offered to take up the mirrors project, currently the web/mirrors page is saying there isn't a maintainer.
What I see is a nearly gone thing. No maintainer, outdated website, better?/other ways for distribution. I personally think, and I say this hosting a mirror [2], it should be shut down for good. People will probably continue to create new mirrors... I did. Is it worth their time and effort?
I'd love to hear what thoughts others have, if there is something, or some way this can be rescued, some way for it to be useful.
--Roger
[1] I see it's still 10.0.14 on github. [2] https://tor.encryptionin.space. No downloads, partially because they take up damn much space, and partly because I also mirror support and point people at my page when clicking how to verify TB, can they trust me?