New to linux and arch - question about mirrors and pacman

khaos64 · 2012-03-27 19:06:14

I have installed archbang and have first ran rankmirrors to get the best connecting mirrors then ran reflector to get the best bandwidth mirrors of those. But have noticed occasionally speeds can stay at rather slow speeds(25K/s). And have also noticed that sometimes if it was under a certain speed (can't remember what) it switches to a different mirror.

So my questions are one, Is there a way to force pacman to switch mirrors during a download/update and two is there a way to alter that minimum download speed to a higher number so it will switch to a different mirror on its own if there is no way to force it to switch during the download.

Kruppt · 2012-03-28 10:34:14

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Reflector

khaos64 · 2012-03-28 14:53:49

Kruppt wrote:

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Reflector

I had already run 'rankmirrors' as instructed in the Arch Begginers guide, but instead of 6 I used 10 I think, and then ran 'reflector' as shown on the wiki page, except with 10 again(or is there more to reflector that I need to do, not just --sort rate). So the slow results was with reflector already as said. Is there nothing as far as either one of my questions? Or do I have to run reflector everytime before any large packages/updates to make sure I don't get stuck on a mirror thats rather loaded at the time.

Kruppt · 2012-03-28 20:38:52

I have no idea, there may be, but I'm not up on those options. I just edit the /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist file, commenting out or delete mirrors that are problematic and not use them. I'd just Cntrl-c the current process, delete the mirror, sync and try the next.

pablokal · 2012-03-29 05:15:08

@ chaos: don't use the report function to communicate support content; this is only for reporting not accepted behaviour like insults or spamming.

See this wiki post: http://wiki.archbang.org/index.php?titl … st_Mirrors
I don't use reflector; remember that the first mirror should be the fastest one.
Experiment with trial and error to see which is fastest in your surroundings

khaos64 · 2012-03-29 06:06:24

pablokal wrote:

@ chaos: don't use the report function to communicate support content; this is only for reporting not accepted behaviour like insults or spamming.

Not sure what you mean, never touched it - at least if I did, it was completely an accident and was unaware I did so.

Thanks for the replies.

What purpose does reflector serve then, the way I understood it and was trying to use it, was that I could use 'rankmirrors' to get the closest mirrors that could potentially give me my best speeds.
While 'reflector' would then sort them by the ones that actually gave me the most/best speeds of those.

Last edited by khaos64 (2012-03-29 06:08:34)

pablokal · 2012-03-29 08:28:10

This is the report you made:

Reported by khaos64 Pacman/Packages » New to linux and arch - question about mirrors and pacman » Post #12879
Reason How do you know which mirror? Is it just going to be the first one in the list?

Regarding Reflector:
Sometimes software works as intended; sometimes the parameters it works upon are not well defined. I can only speak from personal experience, that reflector wasn't satisfying for me.

ArchVortex · 2012-03-29 10:43:33

I tried reflector two months ago thinking I would be lazy and use a cron job to update mirrors weekly but it messed up everything badly. From my experience, I wouldn't recommend reflector yet others use it successfully. 6 years without it has been just fine.

Try running rankmirrors once or twice a week for a couple of weeks and find out what your best mirrors consistently are for downloading and go with them. Just because a mirror is ranked your fastest doesn't mean it is the fastest for downloading. Quite often when I rank mirrors, the fastest downloading mirror might well not even be in the top 5.

Mr Green · 2012-03-29 12:59:28

Might be way off target but I thought you could run aria to grab of multi mirrors.

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Im … sing_aria2

Not sure if that is what OP is looking for, certainly rankmirror does a good job of finding best local mirror.

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#1 2012-03-27 19:06:14

New to linux and arch - question about mirrors and pacman

#2 2012-03-28 10:34:14

Re: New to linux and arch - question about mirrors and pacman

#3 2012-03-28 14:53:49

Re: New to linux and arch - question about mirrors and pacman

#4 2012-03-28 20:38:52

Re: New to linux and arch - question about mirrors and pacman

#5 2012-03-29 05:15:08

Re: New to linux and arch - question about mirrors and pacman

#6 2012-03-29 06:06:24

Re: New to linux and arch - question about mirrors and pacman

#7 2012-03-29 08:28:10

Re: New to linux and arch - question about mirrors and pacman

#8 2012-03-29 10:43:33

Re: New to linux and arch - question about mirrors and pacman

#9 2012-03-29 12:59:28

Re: New to linux and arch - question about mirrors and pacman

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