greypilgrim

Alright, excellent. I will start taking a look at the project board this weekend. Thanks!

Lately we made many enhancements on infrastructure but a lot of things are still WIP. Re-director stuck somewhere in the half-way - geolocation is planned since start but requires more work and and better testings. Before jumping ahead I would welcome you to check https://armbian.atlassian.net/browse/AR-444 and comment there (PM to me or @lanefu) for write access. Then we decide which part suits you best.
 
We will do the best to support you but sometimes it can take time - we all have daytime work and families and we are also just in the final round to push out a release. 
 
Welcome!

Yep that repo is the python code.  Technically apt is a branch in that repo.
 
It's a flask app that runs in WSGI containers.  2 instances running one for redirect.armbian.com and one for apt.armbian.com.  both reverse proxies behind nginx
 
I entertained just doing it with nginx but didn't want to go down the wormhole of exotic nginx configs wormhole or figure out lua
 
Anyway moving the redirect code to using a yaml config to indicate regions and other granual info is like the next step to making other improvements and I'd love a PR for that.
 
Then we can have an endpoint that list available mirrors.  And have a endpoint for regional grouping.  Ex apt.armbian.com/na or /eu
 
After that we can work on geoip support.  I also like the idea of setting mirror with armbian-config. That would pair well with having an endpoint that publishes all mirrors.

If you
curl -I http://apt.armbian.com over and over again, you will receive a 302 redirect to what seems to be a random mirror. I am wondering how I can help add some sophistication to that randomness. As someone downloading updates from the US, it's a big exercise of patience to download at a rate of 20-60 KBps. As each package request goes to the redirector every time (since it's not a 301 redirect), some packages download at a good rate but plenty are very slow for me. In contrast, when I download an Armbian image from bittorrent, I can get 9MBps.
 
I know that everything here is provided for free and I am grateful! I am asking how I can help make this better myself. I have two ideas:
1) Someone teach me about the web server (or load balancer) that's currently handling the redirects... source code, documentation, etc. Maybe I can add geo-location based replies to the web clients' requests. I posted this issue thinking maybe it's the tool involved.
2) Maybe a simpler solution is more agreeable like a user picking a mirror or mirror set themselves. If this is already possible in a reliable way, I will write up the documentation page for it after someone explains it to me.
2a) Perhaps this method could be written into the armbian-config tool.
 
I personally like option 1 better.
 
 
A little about me since this is my first post:
I'm a long-time IT professional. I am not a developer, much more an infrastructure guy, but I work with modern systems which means I am good at scripting and configuration languages like Ansible, Terraform, and Helm Charts. I have a lot of web services and web traffic experience.
 
I would like to contribute to the effort of maintaining and enhancing Armbian!

If you
curl -I http://apt.armbian.com over and over again, you will receive a 302 redirect to what seems to be a random mirror. I am wondering how I can help add some sophistication to that randomness. As someone downloading updates from the US, it's a big exercise of patience to download at a rate of 20-60 KBps. As each package request goes to the redirector every time (since it's not a 301 redirect), some packages download at a good rate but plenty are very slow for me. In contrast, when I download an Armbian image from bittorrent, I can get 9MBps.
 
I know that everything here is provided for free and I am grateful! I am asking how I can help make this better myself. I have two ideas:
1) Someone teach me about the web server (or load balancer) that's currently handling the redirects... source code, documentation, etc. Maybe I can add geo-location based replies to the web clients' requests. I posted this issue thinking maybe it's the tool involved.
2) Maybe a simpler solution is more agreeable like a user picking a mirror or mirror set themselves. If this is already possible in a reliable way, I will write up the documentation page for it after someone explains it to me.
2a) Perhaps this method could be written into the armbian-config tool.
 
I personally like option 1 better.
 
 
A little about me since this is my first post:
I'm a long-time IT professional. I am not a developer, much more an infrastructure guy, but I work with modern systems which means I am good at scripting and configuration languages like Ansible, Terraform, and Helm Charts. I have a lot of web services and web traffic experience.
 
I would like to contribute to the effort of maintaining and enhancing Armbian!