Why should we not use worldwide mirror?

Hello Everyone,

In one of the recent topics, I saw that @Scotty_Trees recommended not to use the worldwide mirror according to his knowledge. I asked him the reason for the statement, and he pointed me out the joekamprad’s reply :

I did not got the exact concept that suggests to avoid the worldwide mirror. That’s why I made this topic in order to learn about the facts and ideas underlying in the concept.
Your explanations will help me to learn about this.

In my experience the topmost worldwide mirror had a significantly lower download speed compared to a local mirror. (500 KB/s vs 4 MB/s)

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Up until today, I was in the belief that if the local mirror fails to retrieve, then worldwide mirror should fix it.

Also, should I completely avoid using the worldwide mirror ?

You really need to make changes to your mirrorlist if/when there are some issues with downloading/installing/updating packages.

When you have a workable list, I would just leave it at that.

Have a look at the following wiki page for a command line tool to generate a list manually yourself in a terminal:

https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Reflector

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I never sort my mirrors manually, and never according to geography.

I used to generate my mirrorlist with

reflector -a 10 --sort score | sudo tee /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist

but nowadays I use

rate-mirrors arch | sudo tee /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist

It chooses the fastest mirrors automatically. It’s the simplest way to get good package download speeds. I do if I notice downloads during update taking a long time, maybe once a year or so.

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Yes.

So far I had not encountered any trouble related to mirrorlist, though there was doubt in my mind regarding this concept.

When I installed EndeavourOS for first time, I thought local mirror will be sufficient. In case it fails, then I will use Netherlands mirror, as @Bryanpwo reside there, hence, there is no chance that the mirror from there will fail.

For the endeavouros repo:

rate-mirrors endeavouros | sudo tee /etc/pacman.d/endeavouros-mirrorlist

will get you the fastest mirrors that work. Again, I see no point in geography :slight_smile:

However, for this particular repo, any mirror that works is good enough. You won’t be downloading a lot from this repo – most of the packages are tiny, and they do not update very often (and chances are, you don’t have many of them installed anyway).

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I am still waiting for your feedback on safesync.
The only reason I have created it is to try eliminating such questions and Arch/3rdparty mirrors syncing problems for good.
If there are any bugs, features or improvements proposed, would be nice to make it a perfect tool.
I have added a PKGBUILD in the forum topic for convenience. :wink:

Sorry for my late reply. My mother took away her phone, due to which internet connection was lost :neutral_face: .

Therefore, according to you there is no point in using worldwide mirror ? Also, I accept your notion of not sorting mirrors manually and according to geography.
I had noted down the commands you had suggested so that I can rate the mirrors according to the speed they offer.

If there exists any mirror which can offer higher speed in comparison with worldwide mirror, then what is the point in existence of it ? Or, it does exist for the case when every other mirrors fails ?

This :point_up:

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Okay then. I think I got the concepts underlying regarding this. Thank you to everyone for helping me know these facts, and also thanks to give your time for my question.

At last, according to you, which reply should I mark as solution for this, or should I keep this open ?

IMO the first reply is to the point. :wink:

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Thanks again. I will remember these facts.

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