Download Mirrors

[Thantos]

Thanks to Network Redux and Ubiquity Hosting Solutions, Simple Machines now has two offsite servers available.  These servers are being used, in part, as download mirrors for our public release packages.

The Portland, OR server, provided by Network Redux, has been mirroring download packages for a few weeks now with great success.  Our Chicago, IL server, donated by Ubiquity Hosting Solutions, is current serving as a secondary nameserver and will soon become a fully operational download mirror.

Our primary goal as we design and implement our network of download mirrors is to require no additional effort on the part of the user.  In that light, requests are being distributed to an automatically chosen mirror with no user intervention required.  Currently, with only one mirror running, the choice is easy to make.  As we bring more mirrors online, download requests will be randomly distributed among the currently available mirrors, resulting in relatively uniform load distribution.

Why not use geo-targeting to choose a mirror?  While we haven't entirely ruled this out, with two mirrors currently on the horizon - both located in the US - any form of geo-targeting is currently not practical.  This issue will be re-addressed in the future as more geographically dispersed mirrors are introduced.

As a user, you will notice very little change in experience.  Once your download request is fulfilled, you will be presented with a "Thank You" page, which indicates the mirror serving your request.  In the event your download request is unable to be fulfilled by the chosen mirror, simply clicking the "Please Try Again" link will allow a direct download from our own servers, located in Atlanta, GA.

It should be noted that only publicly available packages are currently being mirrored.  Charter member releases are served directly from the Simple Machines servers.

Again, Simple Machines would like to thank Network Redux and Ubiquity Hosting Solutions for providing us with much needed relief for our download servers.

[karlbenson]

Fantastic.

Its nice to see as SMF grows its capacity is increasing aswell.
(and weeks/months before 2.0 is public, when I imagine there will be a big onslaught of people trying to obtain it)

[Zenigata]

Great!

[xyxis_fahim]

Good to know. Thanks

[H]

Great to see SMF is growing and thanks to our mirror providers!

[SleePy]

Fantastic.

Its nice to see as SMF grows its capacity is increasing aswell.
(and weeks/months before 2.0 is public, when I imagine there will be a big onslaught of people trying to obtain it)

Thats when all the testing occurs 

[aldo]

Well thats great that SMF now has mirrors and will keep SMF from going down due to high demand of SMF

[karlbenson]

P.S I am also very appreciative that the mirrors aren't setup like SourceForge.

[uberjon]

(and weeks/months before 2.0 is public, when I imagine there will be a big onslaught of people trying to obtain it)

exactly. out of all the websites i visit. its the forums i visit that bug the hell out of me when they are down/sluggish/buggy...

google could be down for all i care.. but smf starts to act up. im pullin hair!

so this is great news for my short temper with slow forums 

[Thantos]

Well thats great that SMF now has mirrors and will keep SMF from going down due to high demand of SMF

Yeah we hope that will be the case.  Additionally, some time in the near future I'll be making a static HTML file that has links to the current SMF packages on each mirror.  The file will be free to pass around so hopefully if our main servers go down then someone will have links directly to the mirrors for people to get the files.

P.S I am also very appreciative that the mirrors aren't setup like SourceForge.

SourceForge was my inspiration of what not to do.

[Tristan Perry]

SourceForge was my inspiration of what not to do.

Yep, when I seen download mirrors, my first reactions were "Awesome. Oh wait, I hope they don't make us choose all the time". And then I checked and was happy again

[aca463]

Good to know.
Thanks very Much!!!

[lordtron]

If you want "Thantos" I can create that static HTML file you are speaking about. It should not take much time for me to create it. Plus I can keep it to the SMF design so no one would be the wiser.

[Thantos]

I've already created it, just need to double check it.  I've just been forgetting to do finish it up.

[Informatics]

Cool... lets hope SMF will be greater than ever (today)...

[johnnyfr]

Thanks to this great forum.

[forsakenlad]

Thats great to hear. I recall the days when we used to upload the packages to simplemachinesforum.org when the site was down

[steighan]

I have a mirror in my bathroom!

not sure, but I think it qualifies as a "download mirror" as well.

[qweylow]

THANKS

[iwanmahe]

naci capability,,,,,,,,,,,,,

[[SiNaN]]

It's good to see SMF growing.

Thats great to hear. I recall the days when we used to upload the packages to simplemachinesforum.org when the site was down

Just learnt about that site. Interesting to read.

[Natha_]

Awsome!! Great 

[Afro]

Its good to be among the people who constantly announce good News.

Good to hear.

[RMX100]

THANKS 

[qwidjib0]

Ubiquity will happily sponsor mirrors in Los Angeles and New York if you like...   our operations are actually a bit more spread out than we let on..    http://www.ubiquityservers.com  shows all 5 cities.   

[metallica48423]

Thanks for the offer.

The proper point of contact for mirroring and such is to send off an email to [email protected] where our project managers can handle the progression

[qwidjib0]

Thanks metallica, I've actually been talking with Motoko-chan there, I just noticed the interest in something geographically dispersed when browsing here.  I'll shoot him a line, this could actually be a good opportunity for some multicast routing.   

[ceejay77]

I have problems downloading from mirrors what could I be doing wrong

[Crasy]

I have problems downloading from mirrors what could I be doing wrong

Could you explain your problem further?
What goes wrong? Do you get an error? Where are you downloading from?

[IchBin™]

It doesn't work. When I just tried to download, it refreshed the page as if to start the download but never asked me to download the file. It just stopped. Tried it a couple of times yesterday with the same result. If you click on the link titled "try again" it will download the file however.

[metallica48423]

What was it that you guys tried to download?

The try again link downloads directly from our main webservers.  I will have the mirrors checked on

[IchBin™]

Yesterday and today I downloaded the SMF beta 4. On the page it said I was downloading from the portland mirror when it didn't work.

[metallica48423]

Seems to be working for me at the moment

You have chosen to open
SMF_2-0-beta4p_install.zip
which is a: WinRAR ZIP archive
from: http://mirror.pdx.simplemachines.org

Note the from line

[IchBin™]

hmm... not working for me on IE7 or FF3. The pop-up never comes.

[shadow82x]

On Firefox3 it works fine for me. I havent tested it on IE.

[IchBin™]

Appears to be a DNS issue or something. I can't ping the downloads site or anything. nslookup doesn't find the name either.

[青山 素子]

All responsible servers for simplemachines.org return the IP, so if it is DNS, it's probably your local recursive.

[Oldiesmann]

Ping and nslookup both work for me for mirror.pdx.simplemachines.org

[IchBin™]

All responsible servers for simplemachines.org return the IP, so if it is DNS, it's probably your local recursive.

Sorry, yes I wasn't specific enough. Seems to be a DNS issue on my end. Although, kind of weird being a problem on a Universities DNS system.

[青山 素子]

Although, kind of weird being a problem on a Universities DNS system.

You obviously haven't worked in or dealt a lot with a University IT department.

[IchBin™]

Although, kind of weird being a problem on a Universities DNS system.

You obviously haven't worked in or dealt a lot with a University IT department.

Well for the last 10 months I have. I work in the Systems department. Although, not in the DNS side of it. But I've never seen any problems like this before. DNS has its quirks, but for the most part I think it is run pretty well here.

[青山 素子]

Well for the last 10 months I have. I work in the Systems department. Although, not in the DNS side of it. But I've never seen any problems like this before. DNS has its quirks, but for the most part I think it is run pretty well here.

Sounds like one of the better ones then. What do you get back on a dig of the domain? Is it a true timeout or an actual error?

[IchBin™]

Wasn't getting any response from a ping. An nslookup showed Non-existant response. Today it appears to pick up the DNS settings, but its not letting me through. A dig shows:

;; Got answer:
;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 1654
;; flags: qr rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 1, AUTHORITY: 3, ADDITIONAL: 3

So its looking better, but I don't know why lol. Anyway, I'm not worried about it. Just thought maybe I wasn't the only one having these problems.

[青山 素子]

Try

Code Select Expand


dig @207.210.95.105 mirror.pdx.simplemachines.org


That will check against our ns1 directly. Of course, this will only work if you aren't blocked from making external DNS queries.

[IchBin™]

It appears it can find it, just not reach it.

; <<>> DiG 9.4.2-P1 <<>> @207.210.95.105 mirror.pdx.simplemachines.org
; (1 server found)
;; global options:  printcmd
;; connection timed out; no servers could be reached

[青山 素子]

It is possible they are blocking outbound DNS except to their own. You can confirm by checking something like mozilla.org or google.com against 4.2.2.4 (public DNS run by Level3).