Anyone wanting to write some Weather-tight code? - tor-dev

9 Jan 2014


      Hello coders,
is anyone here looking for a fun new project to hack on?  Here's
something you could do to help grow the Tor network:
We're planning to decommission the currently unmaintained Tor Weather
which provides an email notification service to any users who want to
monitor the status of a Tor node.  And we'd like to replace it with a
clean rewrite of this service.
https://weather.torproject.org/
(You're asking why we're not simply trying to find a new maintainer?
That's also an option, but a clean rewrite that uses the Onionoo service
would be much smaller and easier to maintain in the future.  Read on to
find out more.)
Here's what the rewritten Weather should do:
- Maintain a list of subscriptions, consisting of an email address, a
password, a relay identity fingerprint, how soon the user wants to be
notified of problems, when it was last notified, etc.
- Allow users to create, read, update, and delete subscriptions via a
web interface.  All these operations should have the usual security
features like email address verification, password login, etc.
- Allow users to search for relays to subscribe for by relay IP address,
relay identity fingerprint, or relay nickname.  This search can be done
with help of Onionoo's search feature, or by simply adding a link to
Atlas (https://atlas.torproject.org/) or Globe
(https://globe.torproject.org/).
- Once per hour, download a list from Onionoo that contains relays that
have been running in the last week.  Check if there are any relays that
have been offline for long enough to notify a subscribed user.  Send out
emails.
- Once per day, download bandwidth histories of relays from Onionoo and
check whether a relay has been running long enough and fast enough that
the operator should be offered a t-shirt.  Send out emails, regardless
of subscriptions, and ask if operators would want one.
As you can see, most of the work can be done with help of Onionoo.  The
parts that need to be written are a web and an email interface, a small
database for subscriptions, and some glue code to talk to Onionoo.
(And if you still favor the variant where somebody maintains the current
Weather, be aware that it needs to parse Tor descriptors and keep its
own relay database to do searches, to check how long relays are offline,
and to decide which relay operators should get a t-shirt.)
Here's some more information on the Onionoo service:
https://onionoo.torproject.org/
Happy to provide more information!
All the best,
Karsten