Reflector

Reflector is a Python script which can retrieve the latest mirror list from the Arch Linux Mirror Status page, filter the most up-to-date mirrors, sort them by speed and overwrite the file /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist.

Installation

Install the reflector package.

Usage

Warning:

In the following examples, /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist will be overwritten. Make a backup before proceeding.
Make sure the resulting /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist does not contain entries that you consider untrustworthy before syncing or updating with pacman.

To see all of the available options, run the following command:

$ reflector --help

Examples

See reflector(1) § EXAMPLES. Examples overwriting /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist need to be run as root.

Tip: To include Worldwide servers, pass an empty string to the country flag. For example, to include France, Germany, and Worldwide mirrors, one should use --country 'France,Germany,'.[1]

Automation

systemd service

Reflector ships with a reflector.service. The service will run reflector with the parameters specified in /etc/xdg/reflector/reflector.conf. The default options in this file should serve as a good starting point and example.

For example, to select the 5 most up-to-date mirrors from France and Germany that support HTTPS and overwrite /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist, use

/etc/xdg/reflector/reflector.conf

--save /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist
--country France,Germany
--protocol https
--latest 5

Enable reflector.service to run Reflector on boot. To run it immediately, start the service.

Note: reflector.service depends on a network wait service to be configured via network-online.target.

systemd timer

Reflector provides a systemd timer (reflector.timer) that starts the #systemd service reflector.service weekly. The schedule can be changed by editing reflector.timer.

First edit the configuration file as described in #systemd service. After you have updated the configuration file, start and enable reflector.timer.

To refresh the mirrorlist ahead of schedule, start reflector.service.

pacman hook

pacman-mirrorlist is not updated regularly, invoking reflector only because some mirror in some part of the globe was added or removed is not relevant. Use instead the timer-based automation. If you do not want mirrorlist.pacnew to be installed at all, use NoExtract in pacman.conf.