2.11.0 release: Fallback mirror support

Just 5 days after the last release, MirrorBrain 2.11.0 has been released. In addition to lots of bug fixes and minor corrections, there is a new feature.

It’s now possible to configure "fallback mirrors", via Apache config using the MirrorBrainFallback directive, for mirrors being used when no reachable mirror is found in the database. Thus, these mirrors get all those requests that MirrorBrain would normally deliver itself (which is the normal last-resort behaviour). This allows to run a MirrorBrain instance with a pseudo file tree (cf. recently added null-rsync script.) In planning is a "degraded mode" that keeps MirrorBrain running in a database outage, for which the new feature is one of the foundations. This new feature is still its infancy, but ready to be tested. It may be subject to refinement, based on future discussion.

Other enhancements and bug fixes:

mod_mirrorbrain:

• Compile fix for old APR (1.2)
• Obsolete MirrorBrainHandleDirectoryIndexLocally removed
• Default of MirrorBrainHandleHEADRequestLocally changed to off

mb:

• Parse errors in the configuration file are not caught and and reported nicely.
• Passwords now can contain special characters.

mb scan:

• A warning that appeared since the last release has been removed. It was caused by the removal of obsolete code, and purely cosmetic.

null-rsync:

• --exclude commandline option has been implemented, to be passed through to rsync.
• --quiet and --verbose options implemented.

Details are in the 2.11.0 release notes.