If you want the most up to date files you can always just copy individual files with any of a number of site grabber tools.
But there is a better way. Several of the mirror sites are using the "mirror" package to keep their copies of TNP up to date automatically instead of waiting for me to send these notices. I urge you all to do the same.
Here is Laurent's mail on the subject:
I use the perl's mirror package, which is available :
src.doc.ic.ac.uk [146.169.2.1]
directory: computing/archiving/mirror
(the version i use is 2.3 (with some changes), dunno if its the
latest, 2.3 is also
on ftp://hplyot.obspm.fr/net/mirror-2.3.tar.gz)
my setup for mirroring all your stuff (ie nineplanets, twn,...) is
file packages/seds.lpl.arizona.edu :
-----8<-----
package=nineplanets
local_dir=/space/poubelle/dl/np
site=seds.lpl.arizona.edu
# compress nothing
compress_patt=
remote_dir=/html/nineplanets
exclude_patt=(^|/)(host|.+tar\.gz|\.mirror$|\.in\..*\.$|MIRROR.LOG|#.*#|\.FSP|\.cache|\.zipped|lost+found/|\ )
delete_excl=(^|/)(host|\.mirror$|\.notar$|\.message$)
-----8<-----
Its important to put host in the exclude and delete exclude pattern to
avoid the local version to be overrode or deleted.
mirror package setup is not trivial, but experienced sys admin should
have no problem with it, with some experiencing,
Laurent's setup will also mirror "The Web Nebulae" and the other stuff
in my directory at SEDS in addition
to TNP. You are welcome to do that, too, though it doesn't really
matter to me (there's only a small amount of traffic to TWN so it's
not a problem for me). If you don't want to mirror the other stuff, just add the
appropriate strings to the exclude_patt.
And Ilan writes:
I am using the mirror perl package from src.doc.ic.ac.uk, and it works very good. I haven't encountered any problems with it, and as far as I know, it is the standard package used by all the major ftp sites to maintain mirrors upto date. The installation of the mirror software doesn't require root access, however a copy of perl 4.036 should be installed on the system. I am almost sure that perl can be installed by a regular user, so mirror can be used even on systems that don't have perl installed in the system directories. The documentation that comes with mirror is very short and doesn't really explain how to configure the software, so this might be the biggest problem in installing it. The man pages contain all the relevant information, but are quite technical and hard to understand.There are two reasons why you should consider going to all the trouble to use the mirror package: it means your mirror stays up to date automatically without any further intervention on your part, and it's a lot faster -- you have only to download the changed files instead of the 5 megabyte tar file (which is mostly gifs).
NOTE:The above is slightly out of date as the main site is no longer at SEDS.