diff --git a/doc/source/afs.rst b/doc/source/afs.rst
index 27a1a8acbd..81a402d5cf 100644
--- a/doc/source/afs.rst
+++ b/doc/source/afs.rst
@@ -380,7 +380,9 @@ our mirror update cron jobs, manually perform the first mirror update:
   If using one of the mirror update scripts (from ``/usr/local/bin``)
   be aware that they generally run the update process under
   ``timeout`` with shorter periods than may be required for the
-  initial full sync.
+  initial full sync.  e.g. for ``reprepro`` mirrors
+
+    NO_TIMEOUT=1 /usr/local/bin/reprepro-mirror-update /etc/reprepro/ubuntu mirror.ubuntu
 
 * Log into ``afs01.dfw.openstack.org`` and run ``screen``.  Within
   that session, periodically during the sync, and once again after it
diff --git a/modules/openstack_project/files/reprepro/reprepro-mirror-update.sh b/modules/openstack_project/files/reprepro/reprepro-mirror-update.sh
index 35956ffc48..dc61424419 100644
--- a/modules/openstack_project/files/reprepro/reprepro-mirror-update.sh
+++ b/modules/openstack_project/files/reprepro/reprepro-mirror-update.sh
@@ -16,12 +16,22 @@
 
 set -e
 
+# For initial clones, and debugging, set this for more verbose output
+# that doesn't time out.
+if [[ ${NO_TIMEOUT:-0} -eq 1 ]]; then
+    echo "Running interactively"
+    TIMEOUT=""
+    set -x
+else
+    TIMEOUT="timeout -k 2m 90m"
+fi
+
 REPREPRO_CONFIG=$1
 MIRROR_VOLUME=$2
 BASE=`cat ${REPREPRO_CONFIG}/options | grep base | cut -d' ' -f2`
 
 UNREF_FILE=/var/run/reprepro/${MIRROR_VOLUME}.unreferenced-files
-K5START="k5start -t -f /etc/reprepro.keytab service/reprepro -- timeout -k 2m 90m"
+K5START="k5start -t -f /etc/reprepro.keytab service/reprepro -- ${TIMEOUT} "
 REPREPRO="$K5START reprepro --confdir $REPREPRO_CONFIG"
 
 date --iso-8601=ns