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New solution to auto rank and update mirror list:

When downloading packages, pacman uses the mirrors in the order they are listed in /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist and /etc/pacman.d/endeavouros-mirrorlist The order in which servers appear in the list sets their priority.

It is not optimal to only rank mirrors based on speed since the fastest servers might be out-of-sync. Instead, make a list of mirrors sorted by their speed, then remove those from the list that are out of sync according to their status.

It is recommended to repeat this process periodically.

The Arch wiki has some instructions to do all this manually:

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Mirrors#Ranking_an_existing_mirror_list

At the moment of writing, the EndeavourOS mirrors are in a modest amount, but we are already future proof by a package in our repo to automatically rank our own mirror list.

Steps to enable automatic mirror-rank for Archlinux mirrors with a timer (systemd):

install the package:

sudo pacman -S reflector

Uses reflector to rank your Archlinux mirror list once a week.

The reflector package now includes a systemd-timer, so you can use it to automatically update your mirror list once a week:

sudo nano /etc/xdg/reflector/reflector.conf

sample output of setting this file up:

save the file by pressing this key-combination:

[Ctrl]+[X] and say yes to save the file.

The last step is to enable the reflector timer to run this once a week:

sudo systemctl enable --now reflector.timer

check if it is running:

systemctl status reflector.timer

This will give something like this:

It shows the following: enabled and 3 days left Triggers: reflector.service This means it is working and will now update the mirrorlist automatically for you.


Editing history:

  • Edited by Manuel at 2020-Aug-26
  • Edited by JoeKamprad at 2020-Dec-10

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Automatically ranking the mirror list

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