artifact parents

Artifact Parents

You will learn how to define a downloadable artifact that produces one or more child feeds, how children reference their parent, and how artifact-backed feeds differ from source feeds.

What an artifact parent is

An artifact parent is a downloadable file that is not itself a public feed. It exists to produce one or more child feeds, each extracting a specific subset from the downloaded artifact.

Use artifacts when an upstream publishes a single large file containing multiple categories of data, and you want to split it into separate feeds.

Defining an artifact

Artifacts live in the artifacts/ directory. Each artifact has its own YAML file.

artifacts:
  dronebl:
    type: dronebl_buildzone
    frequency: 60
    max_download_size: 268435456
    info: '[DroneBL.org](https://dronebl.org) shared buildzone download used to derive the DroneBL family of IP feeds.'
    maintainer: DroneBL.org
    maintainer_url: https://dronebl.org
    rsync_url: rsync://firehol@rsync.dronebl.org/dronebl/

Key fields:

Field	Description
type	Artifact family — controls how the download is parsed and split. The current supported type is dronebl_buildzone.
frequency	Minutes between automatic downloads
max_download_size	Override the global max download size for this artifact, in bytes
info	Description for the admin UI
maintainer	Artifact source attribution

Authentication for DroneBL artifacts

dronebl_buildzone artifacts are fetched with authenticated rsync. Provide the rsync password through one of these environment variables:

• DRONEBL_RSYNC_PASSWORD — preferred, specific to the DroneBL artifact fetcher.
• RSYNC_PASSWORD — fallback accepted by the underlying rsync workflow.

Set the secret in the daemon environment or in $HOME/.update-ipsets.env. In the default installed service, HOME=/opt/update-ipsets, so the service reads /opt/update-ipsets/.update-ipsets.env.

Example:

DRONEBL_RSYNC_PASSWORD=[REDACTED_SECRET]

Referencing an artifact from a child feed

Child feeds reference their parent using an artifact:// URL:

sources:
  dronebl_anonymizers:
    url: artifact://dronebl?parts=http_proxies,socks_proxies,web_page_proxies,wingate_proxies,proxychains
    frequency: 0
    ipv: ipv4
    output: netset
    processor:
      - $CAT_CMD
    processor_raw: $CAT_CMD
    category: anonymizers
    info: '[DroneBL.org](https://dronebl.org) list of open proxies'
    maintainer: DroneBL.org
    maintainer_url: https://dronebl.org

The URL format is:

artifact://<artifact-name>?parts=<comma-separated-parts>

• <artifact-name> references a configured artifact parent.
• parts= lists one or more named deliveries from that artifact.
• The child does not need to know the artifact's internal directory structure.

Cadence rules

Artifact-backed children do not own an independent fetch cadence. Set frequency: 0 on child feeds.

The artifact parent owns the download cadence. When the parent downloads new data, the scheduler queues all children for reprocessing.

Multiple children, one parent

A single artifact can produce many child feeds. Each child selects different parts:

# dronebl_anonymizers
url: artifact://dronebl?parts=http_proxies,socks_proxies,web_page_proxies

# dronebl_worms_bots
url: artifact://dronebl?parts=worms,bots

Each child is an independent feed with its own name, category, metadata, and output type.