I have been experiencing very slower update downloads with zypper; as slow as 70kbs. I always run zypper refresh before running sudo zypper dup but this never helped anything. I researched online on whether I can configure zypper to point to a different mirror but couldn’t get clear guideline. Some guides directed me to a site with a list of mirrors but can’t figure out how to configure this inside the zypp.conf file.
I understand that zypper by default points to download.opensuse.org which will point to the closest mirror or something like that.
I have been experiencing this slow updates on my physical PC as well as VMs running tumbleweeds and opensuse leap.
For example, I updated my system last Sunday and the process took 1h46 just to download package updates.
NB: I do not use any Desktop Environment but strictly uses window managers, thus, I do all my packages management with zypper package manager.
Is there any options to configure zypper to make it faster by probably pointing to a different mirror or just generally make it download packages faster.
I would just use cdn.opensuse.org (in fact, I do) rather than download.opensuse.org. You can use YaST to modify the URLs - though you can also change them on a per-repo basis by editing the files in /etc/zypp/services.d and /etc/zypp/repos.d. zypp.conf doesn’t hold this information (though it does have configuration items for using GeoIP, for example, to find a close mirror based on geographic information - but that’s enabled by default).
To use any specific repo requires only editing the baseurl= line in each applicable .repo file to point to any particular mirror desired. All your repos need not use the same mirror. Editing only the OSS repo’s URL is a simple enough thing to try to get an indication whether one mirror is better or worse than your prior experience. Only files ending in .repo are employed by openSUSE package management, so feel free to work with simple filename changes to switch among potential repo selections and backing up originals before editing. e.g., my OSS* files end in .repo, .repoD, .repoMC and .repo-gwdg among others, so a simple file copy can effectuate a switch of active OSS repo. No filenames here begin with repo- either. It’s only the .repo filename extensions and the file content that matter to the system, so feel free do use whatever works for you, whether for experimenting, or longer. .repo files also allow more than one URL per baseurl=, e.g.:
If slowness in fact results from redirection to geographically nearby mirrors, you can stop it via file /etc/zypp/zypp.conf by changing
## download.use_geoip_mirror = true
to
download.use_geoip_mirror = false
I am in SE USA, leave geoip at default, and normally use download.opensuse.org, not cdn.o.o or mirrorcache.o.o. I haven’t experienced any more than sporadic slowness in quite some time. If you happen to time your upgrading to coincide with the mirror refreshes that follow a fresh release, you may encounter some temporary slowness that should shortly dissipate as more mirrors complete refreshing. Optional repos may be slower, as not every repo carries a full repo set.
Thank you for your response. Apology for late reply since I have been away from the computer. I tried changing to cdn… but the download speeds are still slower. I have disabled the geoip feature to false but still no improvement.
Thanks for the reply. I live in Sub-sahara Africa, Namibia, close to South Africa. I tried experimenting with some mirrors, even those from SA but the download speeds stick sucks. With some mirrors, they keep giving errors of failing to download metadata upon refreshing them.
I disabled the geopip feature to false but still no improvements. Speeds are around 20 KiB/s to 90 KiB/s.
Is your internet connection reliable for other uses besides openSUSE upgrades? If it has proven OK, you may simply need to do more experimenting with use of specific mirrors. Possibly something far more distant than you would expect may prove acceptable. Don’t be afraid to try mirrors as far north as Germany and Belgium.
Yes, for other uses, it runs at usual speed. I even tested downloading a tumbleweed iso image and it was downloading at usual speed. In fact, when I updates other linux systems running as VMs such as Fedora, Debian, Void, they all updates at my usual download speed. Only my opensuse systems are giving me problematics. So, I don’t think the internet connection is culprit.
NB: The usual speed for me here is 1 MB/s in this part of Sub-Sahara Africa. I understand it is a very slower internet connection compared to others but that is what we get in this part of the region but yeah. Nonetheless, openSUSE updates/upgrades were also running at approximate speed of 1 MB/s before but in the last two (2) weeks, all that has changed.
Thank you for the suggestions. I will retest these mirrors from Africa to check whether they are still unreliable or not and do report them accordingly. Meanwhile, I will strive to test out mirrors in Europe.
I’m in the U.S. Had been using download.opensuse.org on my Tumbleweed installation. Just changed those URLs to cdn and what a difference! Although there were currently no upgrades, it took almost no time at all to refresh (zypper -v ref) everything. Thank you for that info.