How do you select the fastest mirror from the command line?

Solution 1:

You don't have to do any searching anymore - as ajmitch has explained, you can use deb mirror to have the best mirror picked for you automatically.

apt-get now supports a 'mirror' method that will automatically select a good mirror based on your location. Putting:

deb mirror://mirrors.ubuntu.com/mirrors.txt precise main restricted universe multiverse
deb mirror://mirrors.ubuntu.com/mirrors.txt precise-updates main restricted universe multiverse
deb mirror://mirrors.ubuntu.com/mirrors.txt precise-backports main restricted universe multiverse
deb mirror://mirrors.ubuntu.com/mirrors.txt precise-security main restricted universe multiverse

on the top in your /etc/apt/sources.list file should be all that is needed to make it automatically pick a mirror for you based on your geographical location.

Lucid (10.04), Maverick (10.10), Natty (11.04), and Oneiric (11.10) users can replace precise with the appropriate name.

Solution 2:

Here's one way that will always work, using good old netselect and some grep magic:

The terminal-addict's "find best server" hack!

• Download and dpkg -i netselect for your architecture from the Debian website. (it's about 125 KB, no dependencies)

• Find the fastest Ubuntu mirrors from your location, either up-to-date or at most six hours behind with this (I'll explain it below, sorry it doesn't split up nicely in Markdown)

  sudo netselect -v -s10 -t20 `wget -q -O- https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+archivemirrors | grep -P -B8 "statusUP|statusSIX" | grep -o -P "(f|ht)tp://[^\"]*"`
  

• netselect:

  1. -v makes it a little verbose -- you want to see progress dots and messages telling you different mirrors mapping to the same IP were merged :)
  2. -sN controls how many mirrors you want at the end (e.g. top 10 mirrors)
  3. -tN is how long each mirror is speed-tested (default is 10; the higher the number, the longer it takes but the more reliable the results.)

• This is the backquotes stuff (don't paste, just for explanation)

  wget -q -O- https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+archivemirrors \
  | grep -P -B8 "status(UP|SIX)" \
  | grep -o -P "(f|ht)tp://[^\"]*"
  

  1. wget pulls the latest mirror status from https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+archivemirrors.
  2. The first grep extracts mirrors that are up-to-date or six-hours behind, along with 8 lines of previous context which includes the actual ftp/http URLs
  3. The second grep extracts these ftp/http URLs

Here's a sample output from California, USA:

 60 ftp://mirrors.se.eu.kernel.org/ubuntu/
 70 http://ubuntu.alex-vichev.info/
 77 http://ftp.citylink.co.nz/ubuntu/
279 http://ubuntu.mirrors.tds.net/pub/ubuntu/
294 http://mirror.umd.edu/ubuntu/
332 http://mirrors.rit.edu/ubuntu/
364 ftp://pf.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/
378 http://mirror.csclub.uwaterloo.ca/ubuntu/
399 ftp://ubuntu.mirror.frontiernet.net/ubuntu/
455 http://ubuntu.mirror.root.lu/ubuntu/

The "ranks" are an arbitrary metric; lower is usually better.

If you're wondering why the kernel.org Sweden-EU mirror and an NZ mirror are in the top three from California, well, so am I ;-) The truth is that netselect doesn't always choose the most appropriate URL to display when multiple mirrors map to a single IP; number 3 is also known as nz.archive.ubuntu.com!