The Irrdcacher Software Package

Irrdcacher retrieves remote database files for the IRRd cache. 
Irrdcacher is used to retrieve database copies that
are not mirrored.  The irrdcacher software package  differs from ftp
in that it can convert RIPE181 databases to RPSL databases,
recognize the databases that make up the IRR 
and automatically unzip them and send a cache refresh signal
to IRRd.

If you specify one of the databases which make up the IRR (ie,
ripe, radb, ans, canet, mci) irrdcacher will look for the remote file
as *.db.gz, unzip the file for you and send a cache refresh
signal to your IRRd.  Specify the "-S" command flag to suppress
the cache refresh signal.  If you specify any other non-database
file, irrdcacher will retrieve the file with no special treatment 
(e.g., the *.CURRENTSERIAL files).

The irrdcacher package comes with two utilities, "ripe2rpsl"
and "wget".  The "wget" utility is a pre-built binary that performs
the file transfer operation and the "ripe2rpsl" is a perl program
that converts RIPE181 databases to RPSL.  The package also comes with
a sample cron job entry.

Irrdcacher recognizes the following command line options.

-h irrd host name (default localhost)
-p irrd port (default 43)
-s ftp server and remote directory (default 'ftp.ra.net:routing.arbiter/radb')
-w additional search PATH component  (the user process PATH is the default)
-c cache path (default ./)
-S suppress the cache refresh signal to irrd
-C do RPSL conversion

The following example illustrates an irrdcacher invokation that retrieves
the MCI and RADB databases, performs RIPE181 to RPSL conversion, stores
the databases in the "/users/my_home_dir/irrd_cache" cache directory,
looks for "irrdcacher", "wget", and "ripe2rpsl" in "/users/my_home_dir/bin"
if they are not found in the default search path, and sends a cache
refresh signal to IRRd listening on port 5678 at host 
"irrd_host@my_domain.net".  The irrdcacher in this example also retrieves 
the RADB.CURRENTSERIAL with no special treatment.

%> irrdcacher -C -c /users/my_home_dir/irrd_cache
                 -w /users/my_home_dir/bin -h irrd_host@my_domain.net
                 -p 5678 mci radb RADB.CURRENTSERIAL


Irrdcacher is provided as a convenience.  It is hoped that some day 
all registries will support mirroring or some other mechanism for sharing
Internet routing registry databases. 

Acknowledgement

  Thanks to David Kessens of ISI for writing the ripe2rpsl conversion
utility.

