Software Sources > Select a mirror: reporting very wrong server list

[derekmarcotte]

Having trouble updating my system by default. The "Select a mirror" dialog is reporting very under-performing servers on the other side of the world.

I've verified that http://geoip.ubuntu.com/lookup is reporting a country code in that wrong part of a world for my IP, but there doesn't seem to be a way to override if the call to http://geoip.ubuntu.com/lookup succeeds?

It would seem that options include:

• fixing geoip database
• patching local system to force override
• intercepting http requests for the lookup and re-writing them (http-only request) <- currently doing
• submit a patch that allows a local override

Does anyone know how to submit corrections to the (http://geoip.ubuntu.com/lookup) database?

Relevant code

[xenopeek]

Does anyone know how to submit corrections to the (http://geoip.ubuntu.com/lookup) database?

I can't find anything for that. The geoip-bin package on Ubuntu uses a database from MaxMind, maybe this service also uses MaxMind. If you enter your IP address here https://www.maxmind.com/en/geoip-demo/ does it show the same wrong country as https://geoip.ubuntu.com/lookup does? If so, there is a way on the MaxMind page to contact them about incorrect data.

[derekmarcotte]

MaxMind reports the correct information, just tested.

[xenopeek]

All I can find out the geoip service is running in Apache, on Ubuntu Server 18.04. Can't find any contact information. Maybe it is using the MaxMind database (as those are the geoip database packages I can find on Ubuntu) but isn't as up to date as the website.

[dhohndorf]

Since the mentioned service http://geoip.ubuntu.com/lookup seems to be broken constantly I would appreciate the possibility to choose manually from the complete list of mirrors. At the moment the list only shows mirrors in the Americas including Greenland. It's hard to believe that there aren't any mirrors in good old Europe.
Maybe it also would be better to manually set a location and start the speedtest with mirrors that are located near the given location. As i can see it defaults to the System Language which isn't always the best choice (e.g. for me who is located in Germany but likes to have his User Interface in English).

[fedcab]

I just looked at the sources and actually, there is a fallback solution for failure of the geolocation.
It looks for the environment variable LANG and derives the geolocation from the countrycode there.
When I execute the whole procedure in a python interpreter it works.
LANG is not set properly in the environment when executing mintsources as root!

[billyswong]

An idea from https://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?p=2531811#p2531811

How about provide a fallback based on timezone, instead of system language? The UI language is usually about who the user is from, not necessarily where the user is now. Timezone will match geolocation better.