Mirror Manager

The Mirror Manager in Modularitea allows you to refresh and optimize your Arch Linux package mirrors to ensure the fastest possible download speeds when installing or updating software.

What Are Mirrors?

Mirrors are servers around the world that host copies of the Arch Linux package repositories. When you install a package with pacman, it downloads the package file from one of these mirrors.

The list of mirrors your system uses is stored in /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist. The order matters — pacman tries mirrors from top to bottom and uses the first one that responds.

Why Mirrors Need to Be Updated

The mirror landscape changes over time:

Situation	Impact
A nearby mirror goes offline	Package downloads fail or time out
A new, faster mirror comes online	You miss out on faster downloads
A mirror falls behind on synchronization	You may get outdated packages
Your network route changes	A previously fast mirror becomes slow

Refreshing your mirrors periodically ensures that your system always uses the fastest, most up-to-date, and most reliable servers available.

How Mirror Selection Works

When you use the Mirror Manager in Modularitea, it leverages reflector — the official Arch Linux mirror ranking tool — to:

Fetch the current list of all available Arch Linux mirrors from the Arch Mirror Status page.
Filter mirrors by country (if specified), protocol, and synchronization status.
Test each mirror by measuring download speed and response time.
Rank mirrors from fastest to slowest.
Write the ranked list to /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist.

This process typically takes 30–60 seconds depending on your internet connection and the number of mirrors being tested.

How to Refresh Mirrors

Step-by-Step

Open Modularitea.
Click the Settings button (⚙️) at the bottom of the sidebar.
Locate the Mirror Settings card in the settings grid.
Optionally, select a country to prioritize mirrors geographically close to you (e.g., “Indonesia”).
Click the Refresh Mirror button.
Authenticate with your administrator password when prompted.
Wait for the process to complete — a progress indicator will be shown.
A success notification confirms the mirror list has been updated.

Country Selection

Selecting a country filters mirrors to those hosted in or near that region. This is recommended because:

Mirrors geographically closer to you are generally faster.
It reduces the number of mirrors to test, making the process quicker.

If you do not select a country, reflector will test mirrors worldwide and pick the fastest overall.

Verifying the Mirror Update

After refreshing mirrors, you can verify the new list:

cat /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist

You should see a list of mirror URLs, ordered by speed, with the fastest at the top. The file will contain a timestamp comment indicating when it was last generated.

You can test the speed of the top mirror by syncing the database:

sudo pacman -Sy

If the sync completes quickly, your new mirrors are working well.

Technical Details

reflector

reflector is a Python script that retrieves the most recent mirror list from the Arch Linux mirror status page, filters and sorts mirrors by various criteria, and outputs a formatted mirror list.

The Modularitea Mirror Manager uses reflector with the following typical parameters:

Sort by: Download speed
Protocol: HTTPS preferred
Country: As specified by the user (or worldwide if not specified)
Number of mirrors: Top results saved to mirrorlist

API Usage

Internally, Modularitea calls the MirrorUtils API from modularitea-libs:

let mirror = MirrorUtils::set_country(Some("Indonesia".to_string()));
mirror.refresh_fastest_mirror();

This runs reflector under the hood with pkexec for root access (since /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist is owned by root).

Best Practices

Practice	Reason
Refresh mirrors monthly	Mirror performance changes over time
Refresh after network changes	New ISP or location may have different optimal mirrors
Refresh before large updates	Ensures the fastest download for major system upgrades
Select your country	Reduces test time and usually yields faster mirrors

Warnings

⚠️ Stable internet connection required. The mirror refresh process needs to download test data from multiple servers. An unstable connection may cause the process to fail or produce inaccurate results. Ensure you have a reliable internet connection before starting.

⚠️ Temporary package download issues. Immediately after refreshing mirrors, pacman may briefly encounter issues if a selected mirror is mid-sync. If you experience download errors after a refresh, wait a few minutes and try again, or refresh mirrors once more.

⚠️ Do not interrupt the process. Interrupting a mirror refresh mid-operation may leave /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist in an incomplete state. If this happens, you can manually restore it by running reflector from the terminal or refreshing through Modularitea again.