What happens

mirrors.wikimedia.org will be sunset on May 15.

What do I need to do?

Probably nothing. This is not a widely used service. If you use the service via the Debian mirror rotation one of the many other servers will take over. If you have actively configured mirrors.wikimedia.org in your APT configuration on Debian/Ubuntu (desktop, virtual machine or server) you need to switch to a different server. This shouldn’t take more than a minute. You can find alternatives on https://www.debian.org/mirror/list and https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+cdmirrors. If you use Windows or Mac you will not be affected.

Why

The usefulness of this service has diminished over time. Since the initial creation Debian has built a CDN (deb.debian.org) to provide Debian packages and most systems use it today for more fine-grained geographical access and overall better resiliency.

The service is not behind the Wikimedia CDN which provides all the countermeasures to aggressive scraping. Sometimes AI scrapers degrade the service temporarily and moving it behind the CDN would involve substantial engineering efforts. The hardware running the mirror server is at its estimated lifetime and would need to be replaced.

Since it is no longer needed the way it was when it was created, we can be of more use to the Wikimedia movement by spending these resources elsewhere.

Where can I follow the process?

This Phabricator ticket: https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T416707

Cheers, Moritz