I came across this page to automatically update mirrors.
The 1st step is to install reflector, but it seems that is part of the default set-up, which is great.
Then one has to open /etc/xdg/reflector/reflector.conf to add a line. That is where I get confused, because when one does a normal mirror update with yay -Syyu you get a list of countries to choose from and when you have ticked one off, a pop-up asks if you want to update /etc/pacman.conf.
So, obviously there are 2 places where one can keep a mirror list. How should I handle this? What is the best practice?
I think you have mistyped something here.
In EnOS, you can regenerate your mirrorlist by launching the application reflector-simple or doing the same from the welcome app.
No, the mirrorlist resides in /etc/pacman.d folder.
If you want to automate refreshing your mirrorlist by using the systemd service, then the parameters defined in/etc/xdg/reflector/reflector.conf will be used by reflector to generate a new mirrorlist:
In my opinion, not to do it automatically. One needs to generate a new mirrorlist if/when there are some issues with those already specified in the list (like low download speed, being out-of-order etc).
If you have a working list, I would just use that.
I am not sure what you mean by “mistyped”: isn’t -Syyu the mirror update command?
OK, I just did eos-update-notifier -init for automatic updating. If, as per your advice, I want to revert to manual updating, how can I:
disable the init service, i.e. with what command
as per the mistype issue, what is the correct command for a mirror update?
BTW, I got into this because when I did yay -Syu, it took a few secs longer than usual to get going, then did it but showed in the output an error message about 1 of the mirrors.
It is the system update command. And the second y will just force a refresh of the local package data base which in most cases is unnecessary to use. Please refer to man pacman for more info.
For updating your mirrors, as mentioned before, in EnOS, you could launch reflector-simple, or do it from the welcome app.
If you want to do it manually from a terminal, you could use reflector command line tool:
No, what @pebcak meant was that we have reflector-simple shipped by default, it is a script that was created by Manuel.
If you open the welcome app, you will see a button called “update mirrors”, this will open a GUI version of that script and whenever you have an issue with your mirror, just click on that button and your mirrors will be updated in an instant.
when you update your mirrors.
the y in Syu is for refreshing the database
Ah, now I see the possible source of the “misunderstanding”.
The “better” formulation, in my opinion, would be:
whenever you have updated your mirrors
or
after you have updated your mirrors
I think the term “updating mirrors” is also a bit missleading. The better expression would be to regenerate the mirrorlist or to refresh the mirrorlist.
I don’t use it myself. From what I gather, it is only for notifying the user if there are any updates and not
You can perhaps run eos-update-notifier --help in a terminal to get a list of options. See if there is anything related to stoping/disabling it
Updating your mirrors and updating your mirrorlist are two different steps when maintaining your system. What @sradjoker said is correct, it was just already implied that once you update your mirrorlist via reflector, then in addition you also are encouraged to update your database with either sudo pacman -Syyu or yay -Syyu (both do the same thing), which is just a good practice to do after updating your mirrorlist so your system refreshed.
Not that I was unhappy about it but there is a “not so subtle” difference between “updating” the mirrors (that is regenerating a new mirrorlist) and updating the system.
That’s always the problem with a newbie: implying things can, and sometimes does, lead to misunderstandings - I speak from experience
Anyway, your comment clears it all up for me.
Circling back to my OP, I’ll follow @pebcak’s advice, not do the update automatically but do it manually when needed, thereby using the button on the Welcome app as per @pebcak’s and @Bryanpwo’s advice, followed by an update of the database as you mentioned.
