How to mirror qmailrocks.org in 7 easy steps

1. First create a document root for your mirror site. For example, you might create the mirror site like so:

mkdir -p /var/www/vhosts/qmr_mirror/htdocs

I've highlighted the directory location in RED because the location of the mirror site's document root will vary depending on how you have your web server configured.

2. Create an Apache vhost entry for the mirror site. For example, if we go with what we did in the above example:

<VirtualHost 1.2.3.4:80>
ServerName mymirror.mydomain.com
ServerAlias qmailrocks.org
ServerAlias www.qmailrocks.org
ServerAdmin postmaster@mydomain.com
DocumentRoot /var/www/vhosts/qmr_mirror/htdocs
<Directory /var/www/vhosts/qmr_mirror/htdocs>
AllowOverride All
</Directory>
</VirtualHost>

In the above example, I have highlighter in RED the values that will vary depending on your web server's configuration. The IP address that your mirror will run on will obviously vary. Specifying port 80 (:80) may or may not be necessary, depending on how you have Apache configured. The ServerName variable will be set to whatever address you want your mirror to have. In case you missed it, I talk about that here. The 2 ServerAlias lines are there because, in case the main QMR server goes down for some reason, I may want to point the main domain to one of the mirrors until the main server is back up. Obviously the DocumentRoot directive will have to reflect to true location of the mirror site's document root and the ServerAdmin variable will need to reflect the email address of your server admin. If you really don't want to use the ServerAdmin variable, you don't have to. I just use it out of habit.

3. In the master Apache configuration file (usually httpd.conf) make sure that the DirectoryIndex variable contains index.php as one of the accepted index pages.

4. Restart Apache once you have added the above vhost entry. Any errors that you may have made should be readily apparent when you try to restart Apache. Troubleshoot those errors as needed and as you would troubleshoot any Apache config problem.

5. Now it's time to run the mirroring command to see if you are able to succesfully pull down a copy of the mirror to your server. Once you've confirmed that it works, you will commit a daily re-sync of the mirror to a crontab entry. We'll cover that in the next step.

rsync -a --progress mirror.qmailrocks.org::qmr /var/www/vhosts/qmr_mirror/htdocs

Again, the text that I've highlighted in RED will vary depending on your web server's configuration. Make sure that the path shown in RED is identical the the DocumentRoot directive that you used in your Apache vhost entry.

If successful, you're screen should start scrolling down as it syncs up each file on the master server with your new mirror. Once completed, listing the contents of your mirror's document root should reveal all of the mirror files.

If the sync does not work, you're either doing something wrong or you may have a firewall/networking issue. Make sure that you firewall is not blocking remote rsync calls.

6. Now that you know the rsync works, you can commit the daily re-sync to a crontab entry:

crontab -e

0 0 * * * rsync -a --progress mirror.qmailrocks.org::qmr /var/www/vhosts/qmr_mirror/htdocs

This will re-sync your mirror with the master mirror every day at midnight. One re-sync a day is the minimum number of times you should re-sync. However, feel free to re-sync more than once a day if you wish. The site changes often, so 2 re-syncs a day is probably not a bad idea.

7. Nofiy me of your new mirror, right here.

That's it! You're all done. Once you've got your mirror running, you can let me know via the form below and I will list your mirror on the main qmailrocks.org website!