Download Server

There is a need for a "download server" for OSGeo that provides for bulk downloads of software.

We are hesitant to handle this on our primary server hosted by Peer1 because of the risk of exceeding our bandwidth allotment and getting charged a lot extra. For that reason the download server is being hosted on a telascience blade. Telascience has extensive bandwidth and is not charging OSGeo for it.

= Configuration =

For now the 198.202.74.219 blade is being used as a download server.


 * It will be known as "download.osgeo.org", and is configured to respond to that, but currently no such DNS entry exists. In the meantime the url http://buildbot.osgeo.org/download/ can be used in place of http://download.osgeo.org/
 * The downloadable tree is found in /osgeo/download on the server.
 * The virtual host declaration is found in /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf.
 * Logs are in /etc/httpd/logs/download_access_log and /etc/httpd/logs/download_error_log.

= Management =

It is intended that each interested project should have a directory under /osgeo/download with appropriate permissions so a project member can manage the subdirectories and files. Scp, or sftp can be used to bring files onto the server. Someone from each project will need a shell account on the server.

Any administrator can create new project directories, and chown them to a project representative.

= End Users =

End users should be referred to downloads similarly to:

http://download.osgeo.org/gdal/gdal-1.3.2.tar.gz

Directory indexing is left on so requesting a directory will give a file list.

= Issues =


 * I would like to eventually add an anonymous ftp server serving off the same tree. I have had very good luck with the vsftpd server for anonymous ftp serving for ftp.remotesensing.org.
 * We should eventually provide download statistics on a per-project basis for easy viewing by the projects.
 * We might consider some sort of rsync ability for updating, or mirroring from the service.
 * There is only 10GB of free disk space on this blade, and in general the telascience blades have rather limited disk space, so these systems offer limited scalability for the amount of software available.