The wiki page entry for pacman-mirrors --fasttrack reads “Update mirrorlist with the fastest mirrors” which for most readers isn’t correct; It should instead read “Update mirrorlist with ranked list of up-to-date mirrors” or something similar. “Fastest mirrors” will often be misinterpreted as fastest downloads.
Hmm, and that is what it means. I don’t think we need to change that description, I do however see a minor inconistency in man pacman-mirrors DESCRIPTION section vs. MIRROR RANKING section.
The ranking function is measuring how long it takes for the system running the test to fetch the <branch>/core.db file in precisely that moment.
The --fasttrack option is a variation where a number of up-to-date mirrors are picked at random from the current pool (custom or default) then ranked and written to the mirrorlist.
Fast is a relative term but the phrase has been chosen by the community many years ago because it accurately describes how the test is performed.
Originally - that is < ~2018 - the app used the response time when ranking mirrors, but the community pointed out that response time does not equal download speed, and thus the ranking was implemented as the time taken to load a specific file from mirror.
You can change the file to an arbitrary file from core repo by editing your /etc/pacman-mirrrors.conf.
## Filename to use when ranking mirrors
## The file must be present in core repo
# TestFile = core.db.tar.gz
Ultimately the choice of mirror should be based on long term experience - not based on a single 8MB file or a ranking which may be valid right now but can change within the hour due to high load or … you name it.
$ man pacman-mirrors
-f, --fasttrack [NUMBER]
Generates a random mirrorlist for the users current selected branch, mirrors are randomly selected from the
users current mirror pool, either a custom pool or the default pool, the randomly selected mirrors are
ranked by their current access time. The higher number the higher possibility of a fast mirror. If a num‐
ber is given the resulting mirrorlist contains that number of servers.
-i, --interactive [–default]
This is a function designed to leave full control over countries, mirrors and protocols to the user. This
function DOES NOT take into consideration up-to-date mirrors. The optional –default forces pacman-mirrors
to load the default mirror file and ignore any preset custom pool, thus allowing for reselecting mirrors
for a new custom pool.
Customize mirror pool by interactive selection - Pacman-mirrors
Create a custom mirror pool using the --default mirror pool --interactive will list all available mirrors and procotols in a gui windows allowing to sort the columns and interactively select according to your preferences.
user $ sudo pacman-mirrors --interactive --default
Well there you go I stand corrected by the author.
I was going off pacman-mirrors --help
Generate mirrorlist with a number of up-to-date mirrors. Overrides : --timezone, --method
and your pacman-mirrors repo on github:
fasttrack : limited ranked list of
xup-to-date mirrors.
$ pamac info pacman-mirrors
Name : pacman-mirrors
Version : 5.3-2
Description : Manjaro Linux mirror list generator for use by pacman
URL : https://gitlab.manjaro.org/applications/pacman-mirrors
The gitlab version still says the same thing:
fasttrack : limited ranked list of x up-to-date mirrors.
Obviously you didn’t look properly.
for unknown reasons, the comment responded to has been removed
The default argument is a helper flag listed under MISC and will only work with --interactive
...
-d, --default INTERACTIVE: Load default mirror file
...
@linux-aarhus I have no idea what this reply is about, did a reply get deleted? I didn’t get a notification there was another reply.
Yes, one poster deleted their reply, and @linux-aarhus’ post above was a reply to the deleted post, not to your post. 