Tutorial

Preface

I would like to thank all the great users of the Manjaro forum who improved my tutorial and made it more understandable 💛

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Difficulty: ★★☆☆☆

This tutorial will help you set up a pacman mirror using a Synology Diskstation, which will allow you to minimize Internet traffic when deploying to multiple Manjaro Workstations / Servers on your LAN.

1. The docker image:

A small alpine image has been used with rsync and nginx included. The details can be found here on on GitHub

When starting the container, two simple things happen:

• nginx is started
• An rsync script runs in an infinite loop with configurable sleep (default 6 hours)

2. The installation via docker

The installation can be done on a server or on a NAS.

Linux Server

Prerequisites:

• docker installed on the server
• (optional) docker-compose installed on the server
• root rights or membership of the docker group

📜 Installation steps with commands

Step 1: Creation of a directory for the package data

mkdir -p /docker-data/manjaro-mirror

Step 2 (Variant 1): Launching the container with docker run

docker run -d \
  --name=manjaro-mirror \
  -p 8080:80 \
  -v /docker-data/manjaro-mirror:/srv/http/manjaro \
  -e SOURCE_MIRROR=rsync://YOUR_COUNTRY_MIRROR \ # omit the line for default
  --restart unless-stopped \
  ghcr.io/twiese99/manjaro-package-mirror

Step 2 (Variant 2): Starting the container with docker-compose

Create a file named docker-compose.yaml with the following content:

---
version: "3.4"
services:
  manjaro-mirror:
    container_name: manjaro-mirror
    image: ghcr.io/twiese99/manjaro-package-mirror
    environment:
      - SOURCE_MIRROR=rsync://YOUR_COUNTRY_MIRROR \ # omit this and the line above for default
    volumes:
      - /docker-data/manjaro-mirror:/srv/http/manjaro
    ports:
      - 8080:80
    restart: unless-stopped

Start the container with:

docker-compose up -d

Synology NAS

Prerequisites:

• docker installed on your nas
• membership of the admin group

📜 Installation steps with pictures

Step 1: Downloading the image

The download of the image is done via the normal interface of the NAS. Simply search for "manjaro-package-mirror" and download the latest version.

Step 2: Starting and configuring the container

From the menu we now go to "Image" and select the image. Then we click on "Start". A window should open.

In the window which has opened now, click Advanced settings.

There we select the Volume tab from the bar and click on Add Folder. Now select or create a folder where the packet data of the Manjaro mirror should be located later. As mount path we have to enter /srv/http/manjaro.

Now go to Port Settings and enter the port you want, e.g. 8080, over which the mirror should be reachable via your NAS IP. Please make sure not to use any reserved or already used ports.

Last but not least, we come to the point "Environment". I recommend each of you to find out which mirrors in your country (if any) support rsync. By default the container uses the mirror rsync://mirrorservice.org/repo.manjaro.org/repos/. Please change that to a mirror close to you.

If you have found a mirror, you can overwrite the value of the variable SOURCE_MIRROR with its address (please make sure to specify rsync:// as well). Otherwise just leave it at the default settings.

When everything is done click on Apply (the blue button on the bottom right) and start the container.

Conclusion

No matter which variant you choose, you will have a full-fledged Manjaro / pacman mirror running. Please note that the first time you start / sync the container, it may take a while until it starts to create files in the directory. This also depends on which mirror you have chosen for synchronization.