Re: Forbidden requests for kernel.org/releases.json

["Theodore Ts'o" <tytso@mit.edu>]

On Fri, Apr 11, 2025 at 11:25:36AM -0400, Konstantin Ryabitsev wrote:
> 
> For actual git requests it's fine if it just has git's default user-agent.
> Obviously, we are not going to start blocking that. :)

A while back we did get blocked once or twice; I assume because of
some IP Address or IP range rate limit?  The following day, the Kernel
Compilation Service (KCS) VM had been shutdown and restarted with a
new IP address, we had no trouble getting the new linux-next branch.

Would having a different user-agent help in that case?

> I'm fine with that as well -- just as long as you keep in mind that it can go
> away at any time the way many Google things sometimes do. I'm also considering
> running stable/next/mainline forks on several major forges as mirror-only
> repos that are updated immediately after each push, so people can use them as
> an alternative to googlesource.

What I might do is to have my system silently rewrite git.kernel.org
to one or more mirrors, with an automatic fallback if particular
mirror disappears.  That does have the risk if the mirror sticks
around, but stops updating.  I suspect that's less likely to happen,
and presumably we can either (a) have some kind of hueristic for those
branches which are known to be regularly updated, or (b) rely on a
human to notice that particular failure case.

						- Ted