Mirrors

This page is a guide to selecting and configuring your mirrors, and a listing of current available mirrors.

Official mirrors

The official Arch Linux mirror list is available from the pacman-mirrorlist package. To get an even more up-to-date list of mirrors, use the Pacman Mirrorlist Generator page.

Check the status of the mirrors by visiting the Mirror Status page. It is recommended to only use mirrors that are up to date, i.e. not out of sync.

If you want your mirror to be added to the official list, see DeveloperWiki:NewMirrors. In the meantime, add it to the Unofficial mirrors article.

IPv6-ready mirrors

The Pacman Mirrorlist Generator can also be used to find a list of current IPv6 mirrors.

Enabling a specific mirror

To enable mirrors, edit /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist and locate your geographic region. Uncomment mirrors you would like to use.

For example:

## Worldwide
#Server = https://geo.mirror.pkgbuild.com/$repo/os/$arch
#Server = http://mirror.rackspace.com/archlinux/$repo/os/$arch
Server = https://mirror.rackspace.com/archlinux/$repo/os/$arch

See #Sorting mirrors for tools that help choosing mirrors.

Tip: Uncomment 5 favorite mirrors and place them at the top of the mirrorlist file. That way it is easy to find them and move them around if the first mirror on the list has problems. It also makes merging mirrorlist updates easier.

It is also possible to specify mirrors in /etc/pacman.conf. For the [core] repository, the default setup is:

[core]
Include = /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist

To use the kernel.org mirror as a default mirror, add it before the Include line:

[core]
Server = https://mirrors.kernel.org/archlinux/$repo/os/$arch
Include = /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist

pacman will now try to connect to this mirror first. Proceed to do the same for [testing], [extra], and [community], if applicable.

Warning: If mirrors have been stated directly in pacman.conf, remember to use the same mirror for all repositories. Otherwise this would result in a partial upgrade as packages that are incompatible with each other may be installed, like linux from [core] and an older kernel module from [extra].

Force pacman to refresh the package lists

Mirrors can be out of sync and the package list from the old mirror may not correspond to the package list of the new mirror, even though the dates of the lists may suggest that they do.

After creating/editing /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist, issue the following command:

# pacman -Syyu

Passing two / flags forces pacman to refresh all package lists even if they are considered to be up to date. Issuing is an unnecessary waste of bandwidth in most cases, but can sometimes fix issues when switching from a broken mirror to a working mirror. See also Is -Syy safe?.

Sorting mirrors

When downloading packages, pacman uses the mirrors in the order they are listed in /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist. The order servers appear in the list sets their priority.

It is not optimal to only rank mirrors based on speed since the fastest servers might be out-of-sync. Instead, make a list of mirrors sorted by their speed, then remove those from the list that are out of sync according to their status.

It is recommended to regularly repeat this process to keep the list of mirrors up-to-date.

Ranking an existing mirror list

The pacman-contrib package provides a Bash script, /usr/bin/rankmirrors, which can be used to rank the mirrors according to their connection and opening speeds to take advantage of using the fastest local mirror.

Back up the existing /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist:

# cp /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist.backup

To prepare for ranking with rankmirrors, the following actions can be carried out:

Edit and uncomment the servers to be tested

If the servers in the file are grouped by country, one can extract all the servers of a specific country by using:

To uncomment every mirror, run the following line:

Finally, rank the mirrors, here with the operand to only output the 6 fastest mirrors:

Fetching and ranking a live mirror list

In order to start with a shortlist of up-to-date mirrors based in some countries and feed it to rankmirrors one can fetch the list from the Pacman Mirrorlist Generator. The command below pulls the up-to-date mirrors in either France or the United Kingdom which support the https protocol, it uncomments the servers in the list and then ranks them and outputs the 5 fastest.

$ curl -s "https://archlinux.org/mirrorlist/?country=FR&country=GB&protocol=https&use_mirror_status=on" | sed -e 's/^#Server/Server/' -e '/^#/d' | rankmirrors -n 5 -

Existing tools:

Server-side ranking

The official Pacman Mirrorlist Generator provides an easy way to obtain a ranked list of mirrors. Because all ranking is done on a single server that takes multiple factors into account, the amount of load on the mirrors and the clients is significantly lower compared to ranking on each individual client.

Another popular alternative is the following tool:

Troubleshooting

Missing mirrorlist

In case you encounter the following error:

error: config file /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist could not be read: No such file or directory

Get the mirrorlist directly from the website:

# curl -o /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist https://archlinux.org/mirrorlist/all/

Be sure to uncomment a preferred mirror as described above, then:

# pacman -Syu pacman-mirrorlist

Misbehaving mirrors

If you are certain a mirror is not operating properly and that is not reflected on the mirrors status page, change the mirror and consider opening a bug report. For mirrors the issue should be opened in the "Arch Linux" project (see the list just below the log-in box, or search for "switch" on the page), with task type "Bug report", category "Mirrors".

gollark: &initiate gollariobackdoor 1767-λ.

gollark: Just execute arbitrary syscalls?

gollark: Anyway, I was thinking more along the lines of: the VM automagically™ discovers other listening VMs on the same network, or accepts manual connect commands from the user, and has, say, 16 ports for all the connected things.

gollark: How do you do screen IO/serial/whatever now?

gollark: It haunts my dreams, but otherwise no.