Author: Lee McLoughlin and Zoe Leech

## Mirror: Quick Start Guide for the Impatient

If you are NOT impatient what you should do is:

1. Get the latest version of mirror from:
ftp://sunsite.org.uk/packages/mirror/mirror.tar.gz
ftp://sunsite.org.uk/packages/mirror/mirror.zip
2. Read the mirror documentation to be found at:
http://sunsite.org.uk/packages/mirror/

But if you are reading this then you are probably too impatient so please read on:

1. Get the latest version of mirror (see above) an extract it into a suitable directory (e.g. $HOME/mirror or c:\mirror).
2. Check whether Perl is installed on the machine you are about to install mirror on. If it isn't then either get your support staff to install perl or wander round http://www.perl.com/ and pull back a suitable copy of perl and install it.
3. Run
perl install.pl here
If you want to install mirror as a command available to everyone on your system thats harder and you'll have to read the full documentation. But for most users it is enough to run mirror from the directory you extracted it into.
4. Edit the mirror.defaults to customise it for you system. You should probably change:
hostname
local_dir
remote_password
mail_to
5. Create a file, using the name of the site as the file name, in the `packages` directory for each site that you want to mirror.
e.g. packages/ftp.some_useful_site.com
6. Edit the package file for each site you want to mirror

`package=<package name>`
`comment=<something to remind you what it is your mirroring>`
`site=ftp.some_useful_site.com`
`# where to start pulling files back from`
`remote_dir=/pub`
`# where to put the files on your machine`
`local_dir=/public/Mirrors/ftp.some_useful_site.com/pub`
`#`
`# If you are under Wind*ws then use a line like this instead:`
`# local_dir=c:\tmp\mirror`
`#`

Keep `<package name>` simple like just `mirror` or `FTP-Copier` avoid spaces and non-alphanumerics as much as possible.

7. Test mirror to see what it would do
mirror -n packages/ftp.some_useful_site.com
8. Run mirror for real. I suggest the first time you do
mirror -d packages/ftp.some_useful_site.com
so you can see what mirror is actually doing. If it appears to work OK then you can drop the -d for future runs.