[tor-dev] Hogging of second_elapsed_callback()

Hi,

How long time can we spend signing status documents before tor gets sad?

I ask because I'm planning on putting dirauth signing keys on a sloooooow HSM and would like to understand if I'd have to make format_networkstatus_vote() and networkstatus_compute_consensus() (and their callers) be "restartable", much like dirvote_act() is "restartable".

Current measurements indicate a worst case figure of 6.5 seconds for a hashing and signing operation. This may even increase some over time. (It may also shrink considerably with some optimisations but this is where we are today.)