pacman-mirrors(8) Pacman-Mirrors 4.5 User Manual

November, 2017

NAME

pacman-mirrors - generate pacman mirrorlist for Manjaro Linux

SYNOPSIS

pacman-mirrors [-f[NUMBER] [[-i[-d]] [-cCOUNTRY[[,COUNTRY]…]|–geoip]]] [-a[-pPREFIX][-R][-G|-B/-SBRANCH][-PPROTO[[,PROTO]…]][-UURL]] [-bBRANCH] [-q] [-tSECONDS] [-v] [-n]

DESCRIPTION

Generates mirrorlist with up-to-date mirrors for Manjaro Linux.
Default is to rank all mirrors by reponse time.
If no arguments are given pacman-mirrors lists available options.
Pacman-mirrors requires access to files which are read-only so it must be run with su or sudo.
To create a mirrorlist using all default use

pacman-mirrors -f

The mirrorlist generation process can be refined through arguments and arguments with options, for example

pacman-mirrors --country Denmark --timeout 5

IMPORTANT

After all operations ALWAYS syncronize your pacman database with

sudo pacman -Syy

OPERATION

No matter how you choose to generate your mirrorlist, you will ONLY get up-to-date mirrors. This means the - at any given time - number available mirrors will vary depending on when the mirror last syncronized with the master repo server.

MODES

  1. The number of mirrors
  2. More control (custom mirror pool)
  3. Full control (custom mirror pool)

FILES OVERVIEW

If you are stunned by this message

.: WARNING No mirrors in selection
.: INFO The mirrors has not changed

This is not an error, it is a feature.
The reason: You have limited your mirror pool too much and none of your selected mirrors are up-to-date.

Suggested solutions:

GENERAL INFO ABOUT ARGUMENTS

Some options are mutual exclusive and will throw an arguments error:

Some arguments requires another argument present to have effect. E.g., this command will ignore –default argument

WRONG

pacman-mirrors -b unstable --default

The -d/–default argument tells -i/–interactive to force load all mirrors from the mirrorfile

CORRECT

pacman-mirrors -b unstable --interactive --default

Or

pacman-mirrors -bunstable -id

API specific arguments. For those to have effect the -a/–api argument must be present.

pacman-mirrors -aS unstable

The arguments can appear in any order except for arguments which takes additional options in which case the options must follow immediately after the argument with or without space, for example

pacman-mirrors -f
pacman-mirrors -f 5
pacman-mirrors -f5

Pacman-mirrors always attempt to download the lastest available data from http://repo.manjaro.org. These data is always used during mirrorlist generation to ensure that you connect to a mirror which is up-to-date for your selected branch. Should you decide to temporarily switch branches you will still connect to an up-to-date mirror.

ARGUMENTS, METHODS AND OPTIONS

METHODS

-c, --country COUNTRY [[COUNTRY]…]
Creates a custom mirror pool with supplied countries.
-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 number 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.

BRANCH

-b, --branch BRANCH
Temporarily use another branch, stable, testing or unstable. The branch is reset with next run of pacman-mirrors.

API

-a, --api [-p PREFIX] [-R] [-G|-S/-B BRANCH] [-P PROTO [PROTO] …] [-U URL]
Instructs pacman-mirrors to activate processing of API arguments
-B, -S, --set-branch BRANCH
Permanent change to branch config, using stable, testing or unstable
-G, --get-branch
Return branch from configuration.
-p, --prefix PREFIX
Add a path prefix to pacman-mirrors file-handling eg. /mnt/install or $mnt
-P, --proto, --protocols PROTO [PROTO] …
Write protocols to configuration, using all or http, https, ftp and ftps
-R, --re-branch
Replace branch in mirrorlist
-U, --url URL
Replace mirrorlist with supplied url

MISC

--geoip
Use geolocation if possible, if geoip is not available all mirrors.
-h, --help
Show the help message
-l, --list, --country-list
Lists available mirror countries.
-m, --method METHOD
Default method is rank but random can be selected.
-n, --no-mirrorlist
Use to skip generation of mirrorlist
-q, --quiet
Make pacman-mirrors silent
-t, --timeout SECONDS
Change the number of seconds waiting for a server response, SSL enabled mirrors has this value doubled to compensate for the time spent on exchanging encryption keys
-v, --version
Show the version of pacman-mirrors

Exit status:

0     : OK
1     : Problem with argument
2     : Problem accessing systemfiles
3     : Missing mirror file
BRANCH: Value from config

Configuration flow of pacman-mirrors

At launch an internal default configuration is setup, file configuration is applied and the commandline is parsed and applied.

API arguments

These arguments modifies key elements of pacman-mirrors configuration according to the packagers needs.

The actions performed by the API are in strict order and performed before any other actions. This also means that ordinary arguments supplied in conjunction with api might be ignored. Eg. -U argument terminates pacman-mirrors when branch and mirrorlist has been written.

  1. If -G
  2. If p PREFIX
  3. If -S/-B BRANCH
  4. If -U URL
  5. If -P PROTO [PROTO] …
  6. If -R

When done pacman-mirrors checks the internet connection and if possible download the latest datafiles for creating the mirrorlist. At this point it is possible to interrupt further processing.

If the -n/–no-mirrorlist argument is present pacman-mirrors will now exit.

EXAMPLES

Most optional arguments are self explaining others require explanation. The API functions is mainly designed to help packagers and iso-builders. However it can be of use for everyone because it takes the hazzle out of editing your pacman-mirrors configuration.

Commands

Commands requiring sudo

MORE INFO

REPORTING BUGS

https://github.com/manjaro/pacman-mirrors/issues

SEE ALSO

The pacman-mirrors source code and all documentation may be downloaded from https://github.com/manjaro/pacman-mirrors/archive/master.zip

AUTHORS

Esclapion <esclapion@manjaro.org>
philm <philm@manjaro.org>
Ramon Buldó <rbuldo@gmail.com>
Hugo Posnic <huluti@manjaro.org>
Frede Hundewadt <echo ZmhAbWFuamFyby5vcmcK | base64 -d>