OpenBSD: Create a private amd64 mirror

The following will walk through how to create a private amd64 mirror on OpenBSD. We will use httpd and do the mirror syncing via rsync.

The benefits and purpose of doing this is as an example, your organization may have a lot of OpenBSD machines to install and update so have a local OpenBSD mirror will have speed benefits. This also serves as an excellent learning experience.

Updated 2021-05-23 to reflect the release version.

Note: The paths below for the OpenBSD version may go out of date but replace the version below with the version you are wanting to create a mirror for and it will work.

Create the necessary directories:

mkdir -p /var/www/pub/OpenBSD/6.9/amd64
mkdir -p /var/www/pub/OpenBSD/6.9/packages/amd64
mkdir -p /var/www/pub/OpenBSD/6.9/packages-stable
mkdir -p /var/www/pub/OpenBSD/patches/6.9/common/

Install the rsync package:

pkg_add rsync

Download the necessary files from the mirror:

Download the openbsd/6.9/amd64 directory

rsync -rv --progress --delete-delay --delay-updates --fuzzy rsync://mirror.leaseweb.com/openbsd/6.9/amd64 /var/www/pub/OpenBSD/6.9

Download the rest of the openbsd/6.9 contents excluding all arches as we have amd64 already

rsync -rv --progress --delete-delay --delay-updates --fuzzy --exclude alpha --exclude arm64 --exclude armv7 --exclude hppa --exclude i386 --exclude landisk --exclude loongson --exclude luna88k --exclude macppc --exclude octeon --exclude sgi --exclude sparc64 --exclude amd64 --exclude packages rsync://mirror.leaseweb.com/openbsd/6.9 /var/www/pub/OpenBSD/

Download the packages from openbsd/6.9/packages/amd64

rsync -rv --progress --delete-delay --delay-updates --fuzzy rsync://mirror.leaseweb.com/openbsd/6.9/packages/amd64 /var/www/pub/OpenBSD/6.9/packages

Download the updated packages from openbsd/6.9/packages/amd64

rsync -rv --progress --delete-delay --delay-updates --fuzzy rsync://mirror.leaseweb.com/openbsd/6.9/packages-stable/amd64 /var/www/pub/OpenBSD/6.9/packages-stable

Download the syspatches for 6.9

rsync -rv --progress --delete-delay --delay-updates --fuzzy --exclude arm64 --exclude i386 rsync://mirror.leaseweb.com/openbsd/syspatch/6.9/ /var/www/pub/OpenBSD/syspatch/6.9/

Note: replace mirror.leaseweb.com with a mirror closest to you.

Edit /etc/httpd.conf

# $OpenBSD: httpd.conf,v 1.5 2017/06/26 17:18:57 tb Exp $

# A configuration suitable for being an OpenBSD www/sets mirror.
#
# This assumes you have checked out the www repository under
# /var/www/htdocs/www and that you have a mirror of the OpenBSD
# distribution space mounted under /var/www/pub/OpenBSD, and
# you are running OpenBSD httpd with it chrooting to the default
# /var/www location.
#

prefork 5

# Necessary so patches and other files don't show up as binaries
default type text/plain

server "default" {
		listen on * port 80

		# Optional, but probably best - change your syslog.conf to do
		# what you want with it then.
		log syslog

		# Serve up ftp space mounted in /var/www/pub.
		# Comment this out if you are not mirroring the distribution sets
		location "/pub/*" {
				directory auto index
				log style combined
				root "/"
		}
		# Send man.cgi requests to man.openbsd.org
		location "/cgi-bin/man.cgi*" {
				block return 301 "https://man.openbsd.org$REQUEST_URI"
		}
		# Send cvsweb requests to cvsweb.openbsd.org
		location "/cgi-bin/cvsweb*" {
				block return 301 "https://cvsweb.openbsd.org$REQUEST_URI"
		}
		directory auto index
		root "/htdocs/www"
}

# Include MIME types instead of the built-in ones
types {
		include "/usr/share/misc/mime.types"
		# Necessary to ensure patch files show up as text not binary
		text/plain sig
}

Enable httpd in rc.conf.local

rcctl enable httpd

Start httpd

rcctl start httpd

To have the syspatch and packages-stable directories get updated, you will want a script like the following to run from cron periodically. Here is an example of this.

Create /root/mirror-sync.sh

#!/bin/sh

rsync -rv --progress --delete-delay --delay-updates --fuzzy rsync://mirror.leaseweb.com/openbsd/6.9/packages-stable/amd64 /var/www/pub/OpenBSD/6.9/packages-stable
rsync -rv --progress --delete-delay --delay-updates --fuzzy --exclude arm64 --exclude i386 rsync://mirror.leaseweb.com/openbsd/syspatch/6.9/ /var/www/pub/OpenBSD/syspatch/6.9/

Run the script from cron, by running “crontab -u root -e” add the following contents. This will run the update script every 3 days.

# OpenBSD mirror: Get latest syspatch and packages-stable updates
0 0 */3 * * /bin/sh /root/mirror-sync.sh

References:

OpenBSD: Create a private amd64 mirror

See Also: