Hi, for all of you serving mirrored openSUSE content via HTTP, I have a little pointer which increases service quality for our users. The idea is to mark the metadata files with cache control headers that indicate that they are not served from an intermediary (proxy) cache without checking for freshness before. Add the following to your Apache config, outside of a directory context. mod_headers and mod_expires need to be loaded. <LocationMatch "\.(xml|xml\.gz|xml\.asc)"> Header set Cache-Control "must-revalidate" ExpiresActive On ExpiresDefault "now" </LocationMatch> This is (the essence of) what we use at download.opensuse.org since two years, and it makes sense to have this configuration on your mirrors for those occasional users who access mirrors directly. This greatly reduces the risk that users see inconsistencies (one file being served stale from the cache, another one served fresh from the origin server). And it doesn't sacrifice good cacheability. This is one of the reasons why HTTP is preferrable over FTP, because FTP has no means of cache control at all. The thing is that intermediaries, in default configuration, may keep content cached basically arbitrarily between 6 and 24 hours, if it doesn't come with directions about caching. Since we won't be able to rely on _all_ mirrors marking the content appropriately (and in few cases even FTP is used), we will still deliver such files directly instead of redirecting them; however, there'll always be users acessing mirrors directly, and they will benefit from the above configuration. Thanks! Peter -- Contact: admin@opensuse.org (a.k.a. ftpadmin@suse.com) #opensuse-mirrors on freenode.net Info: http://en.opensuse.org/Mirror_Infrastructure SUSE LINUX Products GmbH Research & Development