Avoid httpredir.debian.net

[lifeofguenter]

Thanks for creating this awesome project!

I would like to propose for the replacement of the debian mirror (even though its just a redirector) httpredir.debian.net.

Yes I know it is only the default, thus replaceable, but it causes a newly launched EC2 instance with Debian to be randomly unstable at times.

• many of my tests concluded that the mirror selected will not even be in the same country, even though that country has plenty of mirrors
• ec2 instances should strictly use https://cloudfront.debian.net/ for highest availability and lowest latency
• randomly it will select a mirror that is defect, causing automated scripts to fail

In short: httpredir.debian.net is great for private use, but not when every update has to be a non-fail - e.g. when HA/reliability is important.

[nbraud]

Pitching in here: I have been having trouble too with httpredir.debian.org, and it hasn't been very reliable.
Moreover, I learnt during DebConf that it is currently unmaintained.

I would like to suggest:

• switching to deb.debian.org as the default mirror (and default security mirror), as it is backed by a CDN and maintained by DSA;
• making the default mirror, in the special case of the ec2 provider, be cloudfront.debian.net (but not as a security mirror, it is not yet maintained by DSA).

[andsens]

👍 on both @nbraud. I don't have a lot of time right now. But I'll merge if someone sends a PR.

[vorlock]

@andsens I think this can be closed

[andsens]

Agreed. Closing.

[nbraud]

Quickly asked jcristau on IRC, and AWS clients don't see the deb.d.o record for cloudfront with a higher weight (also, they pay the penalty of doing the HTTP request to deb.debian.org before getting a redirect, pre-Stretch), so I guess there is still a reason to implement the different default for EC2 images.