FTPSYNC-CRON(1)

📦
this version · 2 versions
, in debian bookworm, debian trixie, ubuntu jammy, ubuntu noble

🎀 FTPSYNC-CRON — the cron wrapper bestie ✨

okay so welcome to the ftpsync-cron(1) girlies' corner of the ftpsync Manual 💅 this is a section-1 page, she's a command, she's a whole vibe

🌸 NAME 🌸

ftpsync-cron — a wrapper around ftpsync for use in cron(8) 🫶

✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

ftpsync-cron [ARCHIVE]

💖 DESCRIPTION 💖

okay bestie, sit down, hydrate, this is actually so cool 💧

ftpsync-cron is part of the ftpsync suite for mirroring Debian and Debian-like repositories of packages. no cap. 🐧

so here's the tea: there are way too many mirrors of Debian to populate them all from the machine that generates the archive (that's “ftp-master” 👑), so mirrors are organized in a tree-shaped hierarchy. 🌳 meaning:

  • every mirror has exactly one upstream that it syncs from ⬆️
  • and each mirror can have any number of downstreams, which in turn sync from it ⬇️⬇️⬇️

it's giving family tree but make it packages 😭 iconic honestly

now, ftpsync-cron is a wrapper around ftpsync itself, and she is designed to be run out of cron at regular, frequent intervals — like, hourly. ⏰ main character energy fr fr

when she gets started, here's the whole routine:

  1. she reads the corresponding ftpsync.conf configuration file for the archive in question 📖
  2. she determines this mirror's upstream 🔍
  3. she fetches the upstream's trace file via HTTP 🌐
  4. she compares it to the version on disk from the last mirror run — so she's literally learning whether the upstream mirror has updated 🧠✨
  5. and if it has? she triggers ftpsync. periodt. 🔥

like the way she just checks and then only does the work when it matters? lowkey genius, highkey obsessed. 💜

🦋 EXAMPLE 🦋

example use in a user crontab 👇

SHELL=/bin/bash
31 * * * * sleep $(( RANDOM %% 1800 )) && ./bin/ftpsync-cron

(that lil sleep + $RANDOM combo is the random-jitter moment, iykyk 🌈)

💅 SEE ALSO 💅

👑 AUTHORS 👑

Debian mirror team. 🫡 thank you for your service, legends

okay that's the whole page!! 🎀 one last lil sign-off: this gorgeous thing lives in the ftpsync Manual, and you can find her filed under FTPSYNC-CRON(1) — go forth and sync, bestie 💖✨🦋

📦 where this page comes from