[gentoo-releng] 2004.1 propogation method

[Jeffrey Forman]

Releng,

Just wanted to keep you all abreast of how we (infra) plan to release
2004.1 from the infrastructure side.

Corey Shields (cshields) and I will be testing out the 'bit flip' method
for this next release, it is the same method Redhat has used in their
numerous releases. The basic concept is all the files will be uploaded
to public mirrors, but with their world-readable perm set to 0
(effectively 700) so only the owner of the rsync/ftp/http process can
read it. At a certain time, in which we can decide anytime the day we
decide to realase, we "flip the bit" essentially, changing the files
from 700 -> 755, so everyone can read them. Only the permission is
changed via rsync, its immediate and no large multi-megabyte files are
transferred. Hence, 2004.1 is released. This will give our mirrors time
to get ready for the bandwidth hit. John and I came to the conclusion
that we wanted at least 72 hours to propogate before we flip the bit. I
would also like all the release media to be on one of the gentoo infra
boxes 12 hours before that, so we have it somewhere on a big pipe to
transfer at will. 

I'd like to put in a policy that we DO NOT under any circumstances post
press releaes on the various sites (distrowatch, osnews, slashdot,
cnn.com, www.g.o, etc) until the bit is flipped. Let's try and stay the
onslaught of people from .0 who came in wondering "wtf is my gentoo
2004.0?!"

RFC

thanks,
-jeff
-- 


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Jeffrey Forman
Gentoo Infrastructure
Gentoo Release Engin.
jforman@g.o
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