this post was submitted on 19 Jun 2023
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I used to pick out mirrors manually and had servers very close to me, but I recently started using reflector to automate the process, but the mirrors it chooses is absolute dogshit and gives me really slow speeds.

What am I doing wrong?

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Could you include what you're currently using for the various reflector command-line switches? (e.g. --age --protocol --sort ...)

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (5 children)

Here's whats in /etc/xdg/reflector/reflector.conf


# Reflector configuration file for the systemd service.
#
# Empty lines and lines beginning with "#" are ignored.  All other lines should
# contain valid reflector command-line arguments. The lines are parsed with
# Python's shlex modules so standard shell syntax should work. All arguments are
# collected into a single argument list.
#
# See "reflector --help" for details.

# Recommended Options

# Set the output path where the mirrorlist will be saved (--save).
--save /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist

# Select the transfer protocol (--protocol).
--protocol https

# Select the country (--country).
# Consult the list of available countries with "reflector --list-countries" and
# select the countries nearest to you or the ones that you trust. For example:
--country Bangladesh,India

# Use only the  most recently synchronized mirrors (--latest).
--latest 5

# Sort the mirrors by synchronization time (--sort).
--sort age
[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

You are sorting by age, there is probably an option for sorting by speed or similar. You are already only choosing from the latest 5 synchronized mirrors, which should be very much up-to-date, so I'd sort by speed.

And IMO, your countries are not that many, maybe increase the list and double --latest to 10.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Thank you. I will apply your recommendations.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Been a while since I mucked with reflector, but you don't seem to be prioritizing faster mirrors whatsoever. Try --sort rate instead. If that's not fast enough I'd also increase your --latest up to maybe 15 so that you have higher odds of a fast mirror being in the group of just-updated mirrors.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

In my reflector.conf, I have --score 5 instead of --latest 5. I don't know how much this actually improves anything, but surely selecting by score is better than just using the most recently updated mirrors.

[–] trachemys 1 points 1 year ago

Change “—sort age” to “—sort rate”

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

i believe that is what will be used by reflector if it is enabled/started as a systemd service. but, i think, that'll not be used if you're just calling it on the command-line. in that latter case, i think you must supply (those) command-line switches on ...the command-line. (maybe)

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The systemd service is enabled, and when I did actually apply all these in the command line manually too before enabling the service.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

ah. now armed with that extra information, i can only profess cluelessness. perhaps a "--verbose" option, well watched, would reveal something (maybe) good luck!