It's a pain in the butt
Why? Reflector has flags to do precisely that.
]]>Now, I'm doing a more complex process, but with much better results. I'm testing (for speed) the US mirrors that are fully synchronized, and using only synchronized, fast mirrors in my mirrorlist. It's a pain in the butt, but it works well. I also note that this is basically what the Mirrors page on the wiki says to do.
]]>Also, https servers ought to be slower than http ones right
Right. As long as by slower you mean the same as what I mean by longer when I say the distance from the sun to my front lawn is longer than the distance from the sun to my lawn mower.
]]>Since choosing and adding the best server, that was always synchronised and had 100% response to requests, to the top of my mirrorlist, I still have not worried further about that. In fact, I even forgot all options Reflector has got, though I am a sure a quick --help will do to set it to nice parametres. I find that I usually have got reasonable download speeds with that afar server, not great speeds... But I am trying to not update every week anyways, and only when I have got some time... Most often I have got a wireless connection that limits the band more badly than any other reasonable factor... Also, https servers ought to be slower than http ones right, but it depends if you want to be safer or faster...
#Manually chosen 3 top rated servers at 27/10/18.
Server = http://arch.jensgutermuth.de/$repo/os/$arch
Server = http://arch.mirror.square-r00t.net/$repo/os/$arch
Server = http://mirrors.n-ix.net/archlinux/$repo/os/$arch
Really? I though most non-Telstra plans were unlimited.
Unlimited plans are increasing with the lower-end providers (TPG, Dodo etc) IME, but metered connections are still the norm for home, especially with the better quality providers (Internode/iiNet, AussieBB).
]]>1) how do you bootstrap the mirrorlist without a mirrorlist to use to download reflector
curl -o /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist https://www.archlinux.org/mirrorlist/all/
Calling users that do what the devs intended them to do silly, seems unreasonable to me. I take a similar approach as you do, though I do not replace the mirrorlist package with a custom built one, but rather just let reflector periodically refresh my mirrorlist using custom systemd units.
If the devs intended this kind of usage, they would not have given pacman a hard dependency on pacman-mirrorlist, but an optional one instead and / or maybe also would have given reflector a provides=(pacman-mirrorlist) entry.
Well, we do need to cater to people who don't understand the glory of reflector! The base install needs to work, that doesn't mean people shouldn't take care to optimize it. And it's pretty silly IMO to have the package reserve screen space in your updates if you literally never use it.
Anyway,
1) how do you bootstrap the mirrorlist without a mirrorlist to use to download reflector
2) how do we make sure people don't all use the handful of fast, high-bandwidth low-latency servers, except by assuming most of them will choose a mirror at random?
]]>Anyway, let’s settle this discussion elsewhere, as soon this thread will get TGN’d.
]]>Then the measurement will clearly show that. No need for guessing.
You are missing the point: there is no need to measure anything. It is not "guessing" either. Believe it or not, there are circumstances where you don't need a tool to tell you what to do.
]]>Many people merge the pacnew file and reconfigure their mirror based on this packaged mirrorlist.
They're silly and should do what I do... I have a custom "nomirrorlist" package which provides/conflicts "pacman-mirrorlist", depends on reflector, and packages a custom mirrorgen script that uses reflector to grab new mirrors and update the mirrorlist. I can run the script if and when I actually have problems with my mirror...
Calling users that do what the devs intended them to do silly, seems unreasonable to me. I take a similar approach as you do, though I do not replace the mirrorlist package with a custom built one, but rather just let reflector periodically refresh my mirrorlist using custom systemd units.
If the devs intended this kind of usage, they would not have given pacman a hard dependency on pacman-mirrorlist, but an optional one instead and / or maybe also would have given reflector a provides=(pacman-mirrorlist) entry.
There are some of us that don't have a choice...
And it is not covered by the two exceptions I have listed?
Servers based on country are one of your best metrics for detecting which servers are geographically close enough to have superior download speeds.
Internet transfers data at the same rate from a server a kilometer away and from the other end of the world. What matters is the rate the server can deliver and this is independent of how far away you are from it. This is why I find reflector so useful: it meters the actual speeds and packages freshness. I may live in Poland, but my current first mirror is in Germany and in the past I was using US servers too.
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