Bad mirrors are still detected as available

[LostRuins]

Problem description

Sometimes, bad mirrors are still detected as available, and Termux keeps trying to use them by default.

I know we can change mirrors with termux-change-repo, however termux-change-repo is an interactive process and cannot be setup unattended.

I was trying to use pkg install python. Most of the time, it works fine. However, if there is a bad/malicious mirror e.g. https://deb.kcubeterm.me/termux-main (which links to some shady site now) Termux does not recognize this. Depending on your luck, the automatic mirror selection will pick it as a mirror and then you are stuck with that same mirror until manually changed.

Possible Suggestions:

• If a mirror is defective, "testing the available mirrors" should not list it as "OK".
• When "Metadata integrity can't be verified, repository is disabled now" due to cybersquatting, actually disable the malicious mirror for that session rather than keep trying to reuse it.
• Perhaps automatic mirror selection should not be fixed, suggest round robin across the mirror group upon retry?
• Allow some unattended way of changing a mirror besides the interactive termux-change-repo

Steps to reproduce the behavior.

Install termux
pkg install python

If lucky:

• all is good

If unlucky and picked the malicious mirror:

• it will fail. And keep failing, until a human does manual intervention to use termux-change-repo (cannot be automated)

What is the expected behavior?

No response

System information

• Termux application version: 0.118.0
• Android OS version: 13
• Device model: Xperia 5V

[robertkirkman]

termux-change-repo is an interactive process and cannot be setup unattended.

I have found out that for this type of situation, it is OK to use and recommend this command, which is more scriptable than termux-change-repo but has the same effect.

ln -sf ${PREFIX}/etc/termux/mirrors/default ${PREFIX}/etc/termux/chosen_mirrors

[twaik]

Probably we should make termux-change-repo work non-interactively as well. It is not the first time people are complaining about this.

[agnostic-apollo]

Implementing this should solve such bad mirrors.