What it says on the label!
But here's the short of it:
- Are you sick and tired of manually configuring your APT servers to use particular mirrors?
- Do you get frustrated when a particular mirror stops working?
- Does it annoy you that your designated mirror is half way across the country on an under-performing link?
- Does the mirror across the border have less latency than an RFC1149 IPoAC link to your in-country mirror?
Then wait no more!
It slices*! It dices*! And it even makes you a nifty mirrors.list file in /etc/apt/sources.list.d.
./generate-apt-mirrors.shThe following variables can be configured to change default behaviour and can be used in a configuration file for automagic loading.
| Variable | Usage |
|---|---|
| MIRROR_CONF_FILES | Overrides the default configuration files to be loaded. Defaults to /etc/default/generate-apt-mirrors ./generate-apt-mirrors.conf |
| MIRROR_CONF_FILE | Overrides MIRROR_CONF_FILES with a singular file. |
| MIRROR_SERVER | Specifies the server where the list with mirrors is hosted. Defaults to mirror.ubuntu.com. |
| MIRROR_GEOS | Overrides the geos to use. Defaults to CA. Space separated.I.e. if you specify CA US, it will fetch mirrors.ubuntu.com/CA.txt and mirrors.ubuntu.com/US.txt to determine which mirrors to select. |
| MIRROR_URIS | Overrides the full server URI list for the mirror list. Defaults to ${MIRROR_SERVER}/${MIRROR_GEOS[0]}.txt.Generated from MIRROR*GEOS unless directly overridden. Note: this will override the MIRRORSERVER and MIRRORGEOS settings and only use the specified value. Examples: - mirrors.ubuntu.com/CA.txt mirrors.ubuntu.com/US.txt- https://settings.internal.example.com/mirrors.txt |
| MIRROR_DIST | The distribution to use. Defaults to $(lsb_release -cs).This provides an escape hatch to generate a mirror.list for a different distribution. |
| MIRROR_CHANNELS | From which channels to pull. Defaults to <MIRROR_DIST> <MIRROR_DIST>-updates.Example: jammy jammy-updates. |
| MIRROR_BACKPORTS | If set to YES, adds <MIRROR_DIST>-backports to MIRROR_CHANNELS. |
| MIRROR_SECURITY | If set to YES, adds <MIRROR_DIST>-security to MIRROR_CHANNELS. |
| MIRROR_POOLS | From which repositories to pull. Defaults to main restricted. |
| MIRROR_UNIVERSE | If set to YES, adds universe to MIRROR_POOLS. |
| MIRROR_MULTIVERSE | If set to YES, adds multiverse to MIRROR_POOLS. |
| MIRROR_VERBOSE_OUTPUT | Overrides whether to display the diff output. Defaults to /dev/stdout.Example: MIRROR_VERBOSE_OUTPUT=/dev/null |
| MIRROR_LIST_FILE | Overrides the output file. Defaults to /etc/apt/sources.list.d/mirrors.list.Can be used to generate a custom sources list file with a different name or location. Potentially useful in combination MIRROR_DIST or for staging mirror.list file updates. |
| MIRROR_MAX_MIRRORS | Override the maximum amount of mirrors being considered. Defaults to 7. |
| NETSELECT_VERSION | Overrides the netselect version.Defaults to 0.3.ds1-29 |
| NETSELECT_URI | Overrides the default netselect download URI. Defaults to https://ftp.debian.org/debian/pool/main/n/netselect/netselect_${NETSELECT_VERSION}_amd64.deb. |
*) it actually does none of those. Knives are sold separately.
There are other tools that do similar things, but they have dependencies and didn't really fit the bill for me.