In sphinx, we have a :cgit_file: directive that makes links to files. Thing is - we're not using cgit anymore. So just rename it to git_file. Change-Id: I80aca5fb3cc84281e29843944fea33e6f4d9fe6f
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reprepro
Reprepro
Debian package mirroring tool
At a Glance
- Hosts
- Puppet
- Projects
- Documentation
- Bugs
Overview
reprepro
is the tool we use to mirror Debian
repositories (including Ubuntu) to the AFS mirrors.
When updating package mirrors, it is undesirable for the index to be out of sync with the actual packages on disk, and vice-versa. This is generally achieved by syncing in two stages -- firstly obtaining new files in the mirror and then secondly updating the indexes (and removing no-longer referenced files).
Problems occur if the upstream mirror updates itself during this process (which may happen up to 4 times a day). Debian, for example runs a "push" model where first-tier mirrors are notified of in-progress updates (see https://salsa.debian.org/mirror-team/archvsync/) and can restart any in-progress syncs to maintain consistency. OpenStack Infra is not suitable to apply for these notifications, as our mirror is not intended to be public and may be incomplete (we may not mirror all suites, or architectures, etc. as our needs dictate). This means if using other tools like ftpsync primarily intended for full replication we are very likely to have periods where our mirror gets out of sync (with subsequent job failures).
reprepro
is more commonly used to build and manage
private repositories, but has a number of features making it suitable
for our use.
Rather than sync upstream indexes, it recreates them based upon files
gathered from the upstream mirror. Since the upstream mirror remains
consistent, reprepro
will always download a consistent set
of files. Then thanks to the release of the AFS mirror volume being
atomic, we do not have any period where the repository package index
doesn't match the set of packages in the filesystem.
Since this does not require coordination with upstream, the same
pattern is suitable across Ubuntu, Debian and other various apt
repositories that may require integration (or perhaps do not provide
facilities) for correct mirroring. Although reprepro
can be
more complicated to configure, it is consistent across these different
distributions.
reprepro
also makes it fairly easy to mirror only
certain suites or architectures for a given repository, and to modify
these configurations as required.
Repository signing
Note our repositories are not signed since reprepro
recreates the indexes from scratch. This is actually somewhat helpful in
avoiding the infra mirrors becoming de facto mirrors for a range of
unrelated jobs (since we really do not guarantee contents for anything
other than infra jobs).
apt
will require --no-check-gpg
or similar
settings in configuration to use OpenStack mirrors.
Normal operation
Repository syncs are driven from cron
on the
mirror-update.openstack.org
host using the
/usr/local/bin/reprepro-mirror-update
script. Repositories
will update, remove old references and perform the
vos release
.
Advanced Recovery Techniques
For a small repository, corruption is probably best handled by removing the entire repository and re-syncing. This is undesirable for larger repositories, however.
Note
Be careful with vos release
which is done as part of
/usr/local/bin/reprepo-mirror-update
to avoid inadvertently
releasing in progress work. Also be aware the commands in that script by
default run under timeout
which you may not want in
recovery.
Corrupt reprepo
databases will halt mirroring with often
obscure symptoms. For example, this has been seen in production with
reprepo
ending up hung in an silent infinite loop. In this
case, using strace
revealed the last operation was on a
file-descriptor related to a .db
file, which gave a clue
the databases were corrupt. Other failures may be possible, of
course.
The following assumes you have a root shell with the correct AFS permissions for the mirror volumes, drop into something like:
k5start -t -f /etc/reprepro.keytab service/reprepro -- bash
We will use the Ubuntu repository as an example below.
In a crisis, you want to stop the cron job running to update the
repo. You can either edit it out with crontab -e
and put
the host in the emergency file (so puppet doesn't replace it) or, in a
pinch, take the lock in a infinite loop like :
flock -n /var/run/reprepro/ubuntu.lock bash -c while true; do sleep 1000; done
Firstly check in dmesg
for AFS related errors. It is
quite likely any corruption has happened due to issues at this layer, so
ensure stability here before continuing to further recovery.
The databases are in the db
directory in the mirror:
# ls /afs/.openstack.org/mirror/ubuntu/db
checksums.db contents.cache.db packages.db references.db release.caches.db version
It is best to make backup copies before any recovery operations.
Although AFS /should/ keep up, you should do any recovery of the
db
directory on a local copy to avoid any intermittent
issues there further corrupting the database, then copy back the updated
files when complete.:
# cp -r /afs/.openstack.org/mirror/ubuntu/db ~/db
For convenience, setup the common reprepo
options for
verbose logging, the configuration directory and to work on the local
database:
# export REPREPRO="reprepro -VVV --confdir /etc/reprepro/ubuntu --dbdir ~/db"
From the upstream recovery document, the references.db
can be removed and recreated quickly with:
$REPREPRO rereference
The checksums.db
can also be recreated. You can rebuild
with:
cd /afs/.openstack.org/mirror/ubuntu
find -type f -printf "pool/%P\n" > /tmp/file-list
$REPREPRO -b . _detect < /tmp/file-list
- This will take several hours (~6 hours in 2017) as it touches all the repo files.
Note that if the .deb
files on disk are corrupt, this
may lead to errors on update about mismatching checksums which have been
stored in the database. Likely you want to remove these files from disk
and from the checksums database with a command similar to:
$REPREPRO _forget pool/main/p/package/the_package_1.2.3.deb
rm pool/main/p/package/the_package_1.2.3.deb
They should come back with the next update.
In some situations where things are very out of sync, it may be
easier to remove and replace an entire section of the repository. For
example, if during updates files within xenial-security
are
seen to be corrupt, you can remove xenial-security
from
/etc/reprepro/ubuntu/distributions
and run the
following:
# remove old
$REPREPRO --delete clearvanished
# run an update
$REPREPRO update
You can then re-add the entries and run another update, which should resync everything from fresh.
You may also see errors relating to individual packages not being referenced correctly:
checking references to 'bionic|main|arm64' for 'texlive-latex-base': pool/main/t/texlive-base/texlive-latex-base_2017.20180305-1_all.deb
Missing reference to 'pool/main/t/texlive-base/texlive-latex-base_2017.20180305-1_all.deb' by 'bionic|main|arm64'
...
There have been errors!
In this case, the _addreference
command can be useful.
The parameters are the filekey, which is the path to the file,
and the identifier, which is the tuple
bionic|main|arm64
above. To restore the reference try:
# $REPREPRO _addreference pool/main/t/texlive-base/texlive-latex-base_2017.20180305-1_all.deb 'bionic|main|arm64'
Adding reference to 'pool/main/t/texlive-base/texlive-latex-base_2017.20180305-1_all.deb' by 'bionic|main|arm64'
Remember to put the databases back in place:
# mv /afs/.openstack.org/mirror/ubuntu/db /afs/.openstack.org/mirror/ubuntu/db.old
# cp -r ~/db /afs/.openstack.org/mirror/ubuntu/
To stage a recovery prior to release, you can modify the
mirror_root
argument in
openstack_project::mirror
puppet to point Apache to the RW
mirror /afs/.openstack.org/mirror
where fixes are deployed,
rather than the released RO /afs/openstack.org/mirror
. This
way you can avoid having to release the RO mirror and switch back
quickly if things don't work.
When fixed, you can either manually run vos release
, or
restore cron and let the next reprepro-mirror-update
run do
it.