Features

• Tests latency to mirrors in a given country’s mirror list at mirrors.ubuntu.com.

  • 3 requests are sent to each mirror, minumum round trip time being used for rank.

• Reports latency, status, and bandwidth capacity of the fastest mirrors in a ranked list.

  • Status and bandwidth are scraped from launchpad.

• Generates sources.list file using new mirror.

  • New mirror can be chosen from a list or selected automatically using the top ranked mirror (default).

Installation

Target most recent release:

pip install apt-select

or:

pip3 install apt-select

Target project master branch:

pip install git+https://github.com/jblakeman/apt-select.git

or:

git clone https://github.com/jblakeman/apt-select
python apt-select/setup.py install

Invocation

$ apt-select --help
usage: apt-select [-h] [-C [COUNTRY]] [-t [NUMBER]] [-m [STATUS] | -p]
                  [-c | -l]

Find the fastest Ubuntu apt mirrors.
Generate new sources.list file.

optional arguments:
  -h, --help            show this help message and exit
  -C [COUNTRY], --country [COUNTRY]
                        specify a country to test its list of mirrors
                        used to match country list file names found at mirrors.ubuntu.com
                        COUNTRY should follow ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 format
                        default: US
  -t [NUMBER], --top-number [NUMBER]
                        specify number of mirrors to return
                        default: 1
  -m [STATUS], --min-status [STATUS]
                        return mirrors with minimum status
                        choices:
                           up-to-date
                           one-day-behind
                           two-days-behind
                           one-week-behind
                           unknown
                        default: up-to-date
  -p, --ping-only       rank mirror(s) by latency only, disregard status(es)
                        cannot be used with -m/--min-status
  -c, --choose          choose mirror from a list
                        requires -t/--top-num NUMBER where NUMBER > 1
  -l, --list            print list of mirrors only, don't generate file
                        cannot be used with -c/--choose

The exit code is 0 on success, 1 on error, and 4 if sources.list already has the chosen
mirror and a new one was not generated.

Examples

Get the top mirror from the United Kingdom to generate a new sources.list::

apt-select --country GB

Choose from the top 3 mirrors, including those last updated a week ago::

apt-select -c -t 3 -m one-week-behind

Find the top 10 mirrors, output latency info only, and don’t generate new sources.list::

apt-select -t 10 -p -l

After new sources.list is generated in current working directory, backup and replace to update apt::

sudo cp /etc/apt/sources.list /etc/apt/sources.list.backup && \
sudo mv sources.list /etc/apt/

Supported URI Types

Currently, http, https and ftp are supported.

/etc/apt/sources.list should contain sources in the following format::

[deb|deb-src] [http|https|ftp]://mirror.example.com/path [component1] [component2] [...]

Dependencies

Python HTML parser, BeautifulSoup.

HTTP Requests library, requests.