# Change default mirrors



## stroudmw (Dec 9, 2019)

I'm doing a portsnap fetch, and the system tells me that it will take 2h54m. It's fetching from ec2-ap-northeast-1.portsnap.freebsd.org. Wherever that may be.

I found a mirror site at ftp://ftp.za.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/ (I'm in South Africa). How can I change my default mirrors for ports and packages to fetch from a mirror a bit closer to home?


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## SirDice (Dec 9, 2019)

stroudmw said:


> I found a mirror site at ftp://ftp.za.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/ (I'm in South Africa).


Those mirrors only provide the installation media, nothing else. 



stroudmw said:


> How can I change my default mirrors for ports and packages to fetch from a mirror a bit closer to home?


If you look at the webpage of http://pkg.freebsd.org/ you can see a list of mirrors you can use for packages. But, make sure to read the warning at the top too. With regards to portsnap(8), I'm not sure there are mirrors you can choose though.

Most of the time you will already be directed to the "closest" mirror, resolving of pkg.freebsd.org and others is done through GeoIP information.


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