How to find out which mirror host is being used by netinstall?

Ask Fedora
1

How to find out which mirror is being used?

I have a few fast mirror near me, but right now, Anaconda is downloading very slowly.

2

Have you seen the button in the overview (where you configure username etc.)

I guess you even can put your own mirror. It not worked for me because i not had network.

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3

Yes, I know I can put in a mirror manually.

My questions is: when Anaconda is using “closest mirror” by default, then which one is actually used.

4

In short, this mostly depends on the server side of the mirroring service.

The repository typically relies on the following URL:

> cat /etc/yum.repos.d/fedora.repo 
...
metalink=https://mirrors.fedoraproject.org/metalink?repo=fedora-$releasever&arch=$basearch
...

It expands to a list of mirrors with specific preference:

> curl "https://mirrors.fedoraproject.org/metalink?repo=fedora-$(rpm -E %{fedora})&arch=$(rpm -E %{_host_cpu})"
...
    <url protocol="https" type="https" location="GB" preference="100">https://www.mirrorservice.org/sites/dl.fedoraproject.org/pub/fedora/linux/releases/34/Everything/x86_64/os/repodata/repomd.xml</url>
    <url protocol="rsync" type="rsync" location="GB" preference="99">rsync://mirror.bytemark.co.uk/fedora/linux/releases/34/Everything/x86_64/os/repodata/repomd.xml</url>
    <url protocol="https" type="https" location="GB" preference="98">https://mirror.sucs.org/pub/linux/fedora/releases/34/Everything/x86_64/os/repodata/repomd.xml</url>
...

The higher preference should be preferred by the client:

However, the list of mirrors and their preference is generated dynamically by the mirror manager:

The preference appears to rely on several client and server parameters including geographic location, availability and synchronization status.

So, even if the client can reach a specific server, it can be downrated or excluded entirely from the mirror list based on the mirror manager decision.

Moreover, the server can also utilize its own load balancing which makes problematic to predict the final result.

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