Unuseable Mirrors - Redirector Behavior and Documentation

[cmosetick]

Hi, I've frequently noticed issues where the redirector server forwards an Armbian system to an APT mirror that has DNS records, and seems online / functional, but is not actually usable.

I don't know where to file this issue in the correct repo, so I'm making a note of it here.

File: Mirrors.md armbian/documentation@ba9b4f1

* The redirector server provides a direct URL to the most suitable mirror.

* The user is automatically redirected to the designated server.

* Faster downloads: Users are served by the closest available mirror.

Observations

From what I've noticed, the closest available mirror is what I frequently get redirected to, and it seems online, but it's not useable.

Feature Request: It seems that a more comprehensive method to determine if the mirror is actual useable by the local system / has a Release file would be a worthwhile improvement. I do realize that APT itself has some limitations.

Please let me know which repository I can file this feature request / bug report or where I could submit a pull request.
Thank you

Log Output and failures

Ign:3 http://mirror noble InRelease                                                                                                                                                                                       
Ign:3 http://mirror noble InRelease
Ign:3 http://mirror noble InRelease
Err:3 http://mirror noble InRelease
  Connection failed [IP: X.X.X.X 80]
Fetched 378 kB in 4min 8s (1525 B/s)
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree... Done
Reading state information... Done
7 packages can be upgraded. Run 'apt list --upgradable' to see them.
W: Failed to fetch http://apt.armbian.com/dists/noble/InRelease  Connection failed [IP: X.X.X.X 80]
W: Some index files failed to download. They have been ignored, or old ones used instead.

[igorpecovnik]

It seems that a more comprehensive method to determine if the mirror is actual useable by the local system / has a Release file would be a worthwhile improvement.

Thank you very much for bringing this up. We are trying to keep mirros in good shape and in theory, bad ones, should be removed promptly. We still have some parts of the code (repository generation) that doesn't fail when it should fail and that can produce missing indexeses ... which are of course mirrored further.

Perhaps its not the best way, but this is how checking is done:

https://github.com/armbian/armbian.github.io/blob/main/.github/workflows/generate-redirector-config.yml

Mirrors are pulled from database and if index matches main mirror, they are in else out ... then this new config is fed to the redirector which pulls data via cron.

https://docs.armbian.com/Mirrors/#current-mirrors is just database dump and X shows which are manually disabled as failed for longer period of time.