Infrastructure Regional Armbian Apt mirrors

[lanefu]

We've added some enhancements to our mirror redirect tool the allow you to choose a region.   

 

UPDATE: See Friendlier Documentation Here

The following regions are configured:

NA - North America

EU - Europe

AS - Asia (currently only china)

 

to use update the url in /etc/apt/sources.list.d/armbian.list from apt.armbian.com to apt.armbian.com/region/REGIONCODE

 

ex:
 

# cat /etc/apt/sources.list.d/armbian.list
deb http://apt.armbian.com/region/NA focal main focal-utils focal-desktop

 

If you'd like to choose a specifc mirror you can query https://apt.armbian.com/mirrors and find a mirror

Edited January 5, 2021 by lanefu
link to better documentation

[lanefu]

Some more mirror updates:

• By default, geoip support will redirect you to the best regional mirror pool.   (it's not perfect)
• Armbian-config now supports mirror selection:
  • depending on version of Armbian config you may need to first do apt update && apt install jq -y to install missing dependency  
  • Armbian-config -> personal -> mirrors
• FOSSHOST mirror changes:
  • location specific Fosshost mirror domains are deprecated:
    • us.mirrors.fossho.st
    • us.mirorrs.fosshost.org
    • uk.mirrors.fossho.st
    • uk.mirrors.fosshost.org
  • FOSSHOST is now front-ending mirrors via the Fastly CDN see announcement from FOSSHOST.org
  • mirrors.fosthost.org and mirrors.fossho.st are all that is needed to use their Fastly CDN
  • Because Fastly is an on-demand caching CDN, performance will vary by your physical location.  Some may experience a positive improvement, or some may experience a negative improvement.
    • The FOSSHOST apt mirrors are most effective for those in Regions with poor internet connectivity and outside of greater Europe
    • Currently our automatic redirect has FOSSHOST  in the round-robin pool for North America and Asia.   Those in China may want to use a China Specific mirror.  Those in Asia outside of China will likely benefit for choosing the Fastly mirror
    • I recommend using the existing Armbian EU mirrors for those within Greater EU with good internet connectivity.
    • Since these Mirrors are caching, they work best when under high utilization. Ex: Great for apt indexes and common packages, extremely popular image downloads during release.   Less ideal for unpopular images which won't be cached.

 

We're very grateful for all our partners providing mirrors--and their extreme generosity in providing a vast amount of space.  We're always trying to optimize our package and image distribution.   Armbian's a unique project as our release output produces over 400 system images.   Seeding and distribution is significant.

 

If you have any questions or thoughts.. please share on this thread!

 

lanefu

 

 

[Igor]

Some updates on the topic:
 

 

https://github.com/armbian/mirror

[ambiamber]

Thanks.  It's not stated that you can filter on regions using jq:

curl -s http://apt.armbian.com/mirrors | jq -r '.NA[]'
http://armbian.tnahosting.net/apt/
http://mirror-us-sea2.armbian.airframes.io/apt/
http://mirror-us-sea1.armbian.airframes.io/apt/
http://mirror.albony.xyz/armbian/
http://mirror-us-stl1.armbian.airframes.io/apt/
http://mirror-us-phx1.armbian.airframes.io/apt/
http://mirrors.jevincanders.net/armbian/apt/
http://armbian.chi.auroradev.org/apt/
http://armbian.lv.auroradev.org/apt/

 

[Igor]

2 hours ago, ambiamber said:

you can filter on regions

 

Yes.

If you are in NA and you will point to https://apt.armbian.com, our system will anyway serve you closest mirror out of those. We have improved and refactor this system quite a lot since. Its open source and your are welcome to peek into the code and understand how it works: https://github.com/armbian/armbian-router

[ambiamber]

Thanks.

$ curl -I https://apt.armbian.com/
HTTP/2 302 
server: nginx/1.18.0
date: Mon, 21 Nov 2022 03:21:43 GMT
location: https://mirror-us-stl1.armbian.airframes.io/apt/
x-geo-distance: 1156601.990045

 

$ sudo traceroute -T -p 80  mirror-us-stl1.armbian.airframes.io | tail -n 1
 9  vmi1019518.contaboserver.net (154.38.161.119)  39.270 ms  39.239 ms giga-hostin.ear7.chicago2.level3.net (4.1.49.166)  38.339 ms
$ sudo traceroute -T -p 80  mirror.albony.xyz | tail -n 1
11  172.67.136.25 (172.67.136.25)  14.596 ms  14.433 ms  15.490 ms

The reflector selected mirror-us-stl1.armbian.airframes.io but mirror.albony.xyz has less than half as much latency, but more hops.

[wombat]

For Australian users, there is an unofficial mirror at https://mirror.aarnet.edu.au/armbian/apt

[Igor]

And others:

https://docs.armbian.com/Mirrors/#current-mirrors

[evilbunny]

What happened to https://mirror.aarnet.edu.au/pub/armbian/ ? It's showing an empty directory.

 

https://mirrors.lahansons.com/armbian/apt/ proxy via Cloudflare so may be a suitable alternative.

[Werner]

Mirrors come and go. Check https://docs.armbian.com/Mirrors/#current-mirrors  for an up to date list of active mirrors and its status.

[evilbunny]

mirror.aarnet.edu.au is still listed on that page

[Igor]

13 hours ago, evilbunny said:

mirror.aarnet.edu.au is still listed on that page

At the begginging of the page https://docs.armbian.com/Mirrors/#introduction it is written how the system works. What we don't provide on that list is current status of which are live in in sync. However you can check this at any moment:

 

curl http://apt.armbian.com/mirrors | jq

 

Spoiler

{
  "AS": [
    "http://mirrors.tuna.tsinghua.edu.cn/armbian/",
    "http://mirror.twds.com.tw/armbian-apt/",
    "http://mirrors.bfsu.edu.cn/armbian/",
    "http://mirror.ossplanet.net/armbian/apt/",
    "http://mirror.albony.in/armbian/"
  ],
  "EU": [
    "http://mirrors.c0urier.net/linux/armbian/apt/",
    "http://netcup-03.armbian.com/apt/",
    "http://armbian.systemonachip.net/apt/",
    "http://mirror.hostiko.network/armbian/",
    "http://es.sbcmirror.org/apt/",
    "http://mirrors.dotsrc.org/armbian-apt/",
    "http://fi.mirror.armbian.de/apt/",
    "http://xogium.performanceservers.nl/apt/",
    "http://netcup-02.armbian.com/apt/",
    "http://armbian.nardol.ovh/apt/",
    "http://distrohub.kyiv.ua/armbian/",
    "http://mirror.vinehost.net/armbian/apt/",
    "http://k-space.ee.armbian.com/apt/",
    "http://imola.armbian.com/apt/",
    "http://stpete-mirror.armbian.com/apt/",
    "http://armbian.hosthatch.com/apt/"
  ],
  "NA": [
    "http://armbian.chi.auroradev.org/apt/",
    "http://armbian.lv.auroradev.org/apt/"
  ],
  "default": [
    "http://armbian.chi.auroradev.org/apt/",
    "http://armbian.lv.auroradev.org/apt/",
    "http://mirrors.c0urier.net/linux/armbian/apt/",
    "http://netcup-03.armbian.com/apt/",
    "http://armbian.systemonachip.net/apt/",
    "http://mirror.hostiko.network/armbian/",
    "http://es.sbcmirror.org/apt/",
    "http://mirrors.dotsrc.org/armbian-apt/",
    "http://fi.mirror.armbian.de/apt/",
    "http://xogium.performanceservers.nl/apt/",
    "http://netcup-02.armbian.com/apt/",
    "http://armbian.nardol.ovh/apt/",
    "http://distrohub.kyiv.ua/armbian/",
    "http://mirror.vinehost.net/armbian/apt/",
    "http://k-space.ee.armbian.com/apt/",
    "http://imola.armbian.com/apt/",
    "http://stpete-mirror.armbian.com/apt/",
    "http://armbian.hosthatch.com/apt/"
  ]
}

 

[evilbunny]

I've been an apt/Debian user long enough to have a reasonable idea how mirrors work, what I don't understand is why you have a mirror still listed that a few days ago had a copy of all packages and now it's an empty directory.

 

Perhaps more to the point, is this a temporary technical glitch or permanent removal of Armbian packages?

 

In any case I posted the next best option for those in Australia.

Edited 7 hours ago by evilbunny

[Igor]

6 hours ago, evilbunny said:

I don't understand is why you have a mirror still listed

 

Open source projects like ours operate with very limited resources, and infrastructure such as mirrors is maintained on a best-effort basis.

We’re aware that things are not always perfect, but addressing this properly requires dedicated maintainers - something we never had.

If you’d like to help improve the situation, we’d genuinely welcome someone stepping in to take ownership of this part of the infrastructure. Improving scripts to make this information correct and other things that are missing ... Perhaps contanting mirror owner would already be a solution.

 

6 hours ago, evilbunny said:

I've been an apt/Debian user long enough to have a reasonable idea how mirrors work

 

I understand - but our mirror system isn’t a standard Debian-style setup. The “empty mirrors” you’re seeing are a cosmetic problem. Only status isn’t automatically pruned yet, so entries can remain listed after they’re no longer active.

 

This does not affect users: traffic is routed through apt.armbian.com and dl.armbian.com, which only serve from working mirrors. What’s missing is automation to keep the public listing in sync - not mirror functionality itself.

One of those https://actions.armbian.com/?repo=armbian.github.io needs further development.

 

6 hours ago, evilbunny said:

Perhaps more to the point, is this a temporary technical glitch or permanent removal of Armbian packages?

 

Our rsync server works: rsync -av rsync://rsync.armbian.com/dl/

 

I have no clue as this mirror is not under our direct control. 

 

Edit: I sent email to administrator of AARNet.