R devel - Feb 2011 - Set up new CRAN mirror; but have questions before finalizing.

Hi, everybody

I have an account on Dreamhost.com and when I renewed it recently,
their message said my usage of storage and bandwidth had been
reasonably low. In an idle moment about 3 weeks ago, I followed your
instructions to set up a CRAN mirror on their server.  Here it is:

http://www.freefaculty.org/cran

It is not hosted at my University, but it is a working, high
availability server.  Is there any reason it could not be listed as a
CRAN mirror. (Although I really have no idea where these machines
exist. I'm pretty sure it is in the USA. I'll try to find out).

Maybe you might try it and see?  It has updated several times, no
trouble I can see in that.

I have a couple of small details to ask about.  Maybe this first one
is a potential  "bug report" for the CRAN mirror instructions.

1. Permissions on "src" and "web" folders are 700,  and so
running
"update.packages" or an apt-get update against the debian stuff
results in permission denied errors.  I re-set the permissions
manually, but wonder if I'm actually supposed to mess around with your
archive.  After doing that, it works.  But I worry a little bit about
what else might not be readable "down there" in the hierarchy. And I
wonder why any body else's mirror works without doing that.

Notice before
> update.packages( repos=c("http://www.freefaculty.org/cran"))
Warning: unable to access index for repository
http://www.freefaculty.org/cran/src/contrib

and after giving others rx permission on "src".
> update.packages( repos=c("http://www.freefaculty.org/cran"))
RandomFields :
 Version 1.3.47 installed in /usr/local/lib/R/site-library
 Version 2.0.40 available at http://www.freefaculty.org/cran
Update (y/N/c)?

So at least that part works.  right?

2. When I run "apt-get update" against my mirror, i get a lot of
harassment about the lack of a security key for my repository.  Should
I be publishing an R Core team key to fix that, or my own key to do
what?  I've never administered an apt repository before. I have
administered yum repositories and the security there is in the key on
the individual RPMS, I don't quite understand what the Debian thing is
asking me to do.

If just a couple of you would test this out, I would feel more brave
in asking to have this listed on the CRAN mirror system.

Regards,

pj

-- 
Paul E. Johnson
Professor, Political Science
1541 Lilac Lane, Room 504
University of Kansas

>>>>> On Fri, 18 Feb 2011 22:00:28 -0600,
>>>>> Paul Johnson (PJ) wrote:
  > Hi, everybody
  > I have an account on Dreamhost.com and when I renewed it recently,
  > their message said my usage of storage and bandwidth had been
  > reasonably low. In an idle moment about 3 weeks ago, I followed your
  > instructions to set up a CRAN mirror on their server.  Here it is:

  > http://www.freefaculty.org/cran

  > It is not hosted at my University, but it is a working, high
  > availability server.  Is there any reason it could not be listed as a
  > CRAN mirror. (Although I really have no idea where these machines
  > exist. I'm pretty sure it is in the USA. I'll try to find out).

We would need to know where it is because we lsit mirrors in the US
sorted by state ...
  

  > Maybe you might try it and see?  It has updated several times, no
  > trouble I can see in that.

  > I have a couple of small details to ask about.  Maybe this first one
  > is a potential  "bug report" for the CRAN mirror instructions.

  > 1. Permissions on "src" and "web" folders are 700,

Then you must have made a mistake in setting up the mirror, because on
the master we have 775 for both directories and all directories within
these two. We also had never complaints about this before.

  > and so running "update.packages" or an apt-get update against
the
  > debian stuff results in permission denied errors.  I re-set the
  > permissions manually, but wonder if I'm actually supposed to mess
  > around with your archive.  After doing that, it works.  But I
  > worry a little bit about what else might not be readable "down
  > there" in the hierarchy. And I wonder why any body else's mirror
  > works without doing that.

Well, they simply mirrored our permissions ...  


  > 2. When I run "apt-get update" against my mirror, i get a lot
of
  > harassment about the lack of a security key for my repository.  Should
  > I be publishing an R Core team key to fix that, or my own key to do
  > what?  I've never administered an apt repository before. I have
  > administered yum repositories and the security there is in the key on
  > the individual RPMS, I don't quite understand what the Debian thing
is
  > asking me to do.

It is quite common then non-official Debian mirrors have no security
key, I would not worry too much about that.

Best regards,
Fritz Leisch