Re: Support rsync to help Chinese users to setup mirrors

[Ricardo Wurmus]

Hi,

> There is the national firewall in China, so common users have difficult
> to download Guix packages in a fair speed. This may hardly understand by
> people outside China, but that is the fact.

I’m aware.  I lived with the firewall for ~7 years and would like to
make sure that people who are subjected to the firewall can use Guix
without being restricted.

> We hope there's a way like rsync to sync /gnu/store with upstream, so
> that we can provide a faster cache for Chinese users.

I think it may be best to just sync the cache of nars and narinfos.

Would rsync over SSH be sufficient or does it have to be rsyncd on the
default rsync port?  (SSH will be easier for me because then I don’t
need to apply for another port to be opened at the institute firewall.)

I’ve also been looking into our options for restricting rsync access via
chroot or namespaces.  Looks like the easiest way to do this is to have
an rsync user account that is restricted to a chroot with access to the
nar cache.

--
Ricardo