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

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

$ reflector --help

Note It is typically not a good idea to filter by country; there are only a finite number of mirrors in a single country. Network throughput is only partly determined by geographical distance.

Examples

See reflector(1) § EXAMPLES.

Note Examples overwriting /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist need to be run as root. Make a backup before proceeding and verify the results afterwards.

Automation

systemd service

Reflector ships with reflector.service, which runs Reflector using the options specified in /etc/xdg/reflector/reflector.conf. The default options in that file provide a good starting point and example.

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.

For changing the default options that reflector.service gets started with, edit the configuration file as described in #systemd service. Then, 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 because a mirror in some part of the globe was added or removed is not relevant; use the #systemd timer approach instead. If you do not want mirrorlist.pacnew to be installed at all, use NoExtract in /etc/pacman.conf.