Hi!
We're happy to announce that the State of the Onion, a livestream event
highlighting updates from onion-world over the last year, is returning
this month! This year, we'll State of the Onion will be a two-part event:
- Wednesday, Nov 9, State of the Onion: the Tor Project @ 17:00-18:30
UTC: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uSyBZ7GIzJY
- Wednesday, Nov 16, State of the Onion: the Tor community @ 17:00-18:30
UTC: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O-7k0PjnBbk
Everyone is invited to hear news, accomplishments, challenges, and next
steps of all the Tor Project's teams + Tor community projects during
these live events.
More information about the Tor Project's event in
https://blog.torproject.org/state-of-the-onion-2022/
cheers,
gaba
--
pronouns she/her/they
GPG Fingerprint EE3F DF5C AD91 643C 21BE 8370 180D B06C 59CA BD19
Greetings,
Network team will be releasing either Wednesday or Thursday (November 9th or
10th 2022) a new stable release from the 0.4.7.x series.
We've been working a lot on this stable version to add fixes to help against
the network denial of service. This is an important release that we hope will
help us fight this DoS better.
Upcoming versions:
- 0.4.7.11
@network-team: It is _now_ a good time to start reviewing changes/ files:
https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/core/tor/-/tree/main/changes
Last, we've asked the dirauth to recommend this version few minutes ago. Keep
an eye out for the release announcement and a blog post about this new stable
version.
Cheers!
David
--
30ew87vL0lcJ+uAxFHzrN2RFVk7G7DOEMiNOsmescfw=
Here's your monthly dose of sysadmin news!
# Roll call: who's there and emergencies
anarcat, gaba, kez, lavamind
# Dashboard review
We did our normal per-user check-in:
* https://gitlab.torproject.org/groups/tpo/-/boards?scope=all&utf8=%E2%9C%93&…
* https://gitlab.torproject.org/groups/tpo/-/boards?scope=all&utf8=%E2%9C%93&…
* https://gitlab.torproject.org/groups/tpo/-/boards?scope=all&utf8=%E2%9C%93&…
... and briefly reviewed the general dashboards:
* https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/tpa/team/-/boards/117
* https://gitlab.torproject.org/groups/tpo/web/-/boards
* https://gitlab.torproject.org/groups/tpo/tpa/-/boards
We need to rethink the web board triage, as mentioned in the last
point of this meeting.
# TPA-RFC-42: 2023 roadmap
Gaba brought up a few items we need to plan for, and schedule:
* donate page rewrite (kez)
* sponsor9:
* self-host discourse (Q1-Q2 < june 2023)
* RT and cdr.link evaluation (Q1-Q2, gus): "improve our frontdesk
tool by exploring the possibility of migrating to a better tool
that can manage messaging apps with our users"
* download page changes (kez? currently blocked on nico)
* weblate transition (CI changes pending, lavamind following up)
* developer portal (dev.torproject.org), in Hugo, from ura.design
([tpo/web/dev#6][])
Those are tasks that either TPA will need to do themselves or assist
other people in. Gaba also went through the work planned for 2023 in
general to see what would affect TPA.
We then discussed anarcat's roadmap proposal ([TPA-RFC-42][]):
* do the bookworm upgrades, this includes:
* puppet server 7
* puppet agent 7
* plan would be:
* Q1-Q2: deploy new machines with bookworm
* Q1-Q4: upgrade existing machines to bookworm
* email services migration (e.g. execute TPA-RFC-31, still need to
decide the scope, proposal coming up)
* possibly retire schleuder (e.g. execute TPA-RFC-41, currently
waiting for feedback from the community council)
* complete the cymru migration (e.g. execute TPA-RFC-40)
* retire gitolite/gitweb (e.g. execute TPA-RFC-36)
* retire SVN (e.g. execute TPA-RFC-11)
* monitoring system overhaul (TPA-RFC-33)
* deploy a Puppet CI
* e.g. make the Puppet repo public, possibly by removing private content
and just creating a "graft" to have a new repository without old
history (as opposed to rewriting the entire history, because then
we don't know if we have confidential stuff in the old history)
* there are disagreements on whether or not we should make the
repository public in the first place, as it's not exactly "state
of the art" puppet code, which could be embarrassing
* there's also a concern that we don't need CI as long as we don't
have actual tests to run (but it's also kind of pointless to have
CI without tests to run...), but for now we already have the
objective of running linting checks on push ([tpo/tpa/team#31226][])
* plan for summer vacations
[tpo/web/dev#6]: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/web/dev/-/issues/6
[TPA-RFC-42]: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/tpa/team/-/issues/40924
[tpo/tpa/team#31226]: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/tpa/team/-/issues/31226
# Web team organisation
Postponed to next meeting. anarcat will join Gaba's next triage
session with gus to see how that goes.
# Metrics of the month
* hosts in Puppet: 95, LDAP: 95, Prometheus exporters: 163
* number of Apache servers monitored: 29, hits per second: 715
* number of self-hosted nameservers: 6, mail servers: 10
* pending upgrades: 0, reboots: 4
* average load: 0.64, memory available: 4.61 TiB/5.74 TiB, running
processes: 736
* disk free/total: 32.50 TiB/92.28 TiB
* bytes sent: 363.66 MB/s, received: 215.11 MB/s
* planned bullseye upgrades completion date: 2022-11-01
* [GitLab tickets][]: 175 tickets including...
* open: 0
* icebox: 144
* backlog: 17
* next: 4
* doing: 7
* needs review: 1
* needs information: 2
* (closed: 2934)
[Gitlab tickets]: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/tpa/team/-/boards
Upgrade prediction graph lives at:
https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/tpa/team/-/wikis/howto/upgrades/bullseye/
Now also available as the main Grafana dashboard. Head to
<https://grafana.torproject.org/>, change the time period to 30 days,
and wait a while for results to render.
# Number of the month: 12
Progress on bullseye upgrades mostly flat-lined at 12 machines since
August. We actually have three *less* bullseye servers now, down to 83
from 86.
--
Antoine Beaupré
torproject.org system administration
Hello everyone! These are my updates from October.
Much of my work was concentrated around helping users in Iran circumvent
censorship[1] and learning (and investigating) what usability and
connectivity issues they were facing amidst the heavy censorship. This
usually involved helping users with using pluggable transports with apps
in the Tor ecosystem and investigating Tor logs to figure out if and how
Tor was failing to connect. I have been able to respond to more than
500 support tickets from Iran in the last month but this is very much work in
progress as internet is heavily censored in Iran right now.
With the launch of the Year End Campaign, as always, we have generated a
good deal of interest on our user support and discussion platforms and I
have been responding to these queries. A lot of general Tor questions,
questions about using Tor Browser, etc.
We had 4 Tor Browser releases in the past month and I have been involved
with some testing and also wrote some documentation for the Tor Browser
Manual adding instructions for using the GetBridges Telegram bot[2]
and a dedicated help section[3].
A quick overview of our user support channels:
Timeline: 01 - 31 October 2022
# Frontdesk
Tickets:
open: 50
resolved: 766
Breakdown of most frequent tickets by numbers:
1. 99 RT Tickets - Circumventing Censorship with Tor in Iran.
2. 22 RT Tickets - Private Bridge requests from China[4]
3. 43 RT Tickets - How to use a Tor Bridge in Russia[5]
# Telegram and Signal Support channel (cdr.link)
Tickets resolved: 1475
The other most frequent ticket we received have been about:
1. 1140 tickets: Circumventing censorship in Iran.
2. 169 tickets: Circumventing censorship in Russia
3. 16 tickets - Using unlisted obfs4 bridges in China
4. 12 tickets - Questions about using Snowflake and setting up Snowflake
proxies
# Tor Forum
Most popular topics in the Support category (in terms of no. of views):
1. "Standalone proxy - traffic relayed almost zero with restricted NAT
type"[6]
2. "How can I use Snowflake with tor (service)?"[7]
3. "Why has Tor slowed down so much recently?"[8]
4. "Bookmarks in my Tor Browser"[9]
5. "Bridge or Snowflake? low RAM VPS"[10]
Thanks,
-- Joydeep
[1]: https://forum.torproject.net/t/iran-circumventing-censorship-with-tor/4590
[2]: https://tb-manual.torproject.org/bridges/
[3]: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/web/manual/-/issues/131
[4]: https://support.torproject.org/censorship/connecting-from-china/
[5]: https://forum.torproject.net/t/tor-blocked-in-russia-how-to-circumvent-cens…
[6]: https://forum.torproject.net/t/standalone-proxy-traffic-relayed-almost-zero…
[7]: https://forum.torproject.net/t/how-can-i-use-snowflake-with-tor-service/504…
[8]: https://forum.torproject.net/t/why-has-tor-slowed-down-so-much-recently/502…
[9]: https://forum.torproject.net/t/bookmarks-in-my-tor-browser/5310/7
[10]: https://forum.torproject.net/t/bridge-or-snowflake-low-ram-vps/5019/6
Hi everyone,
This is my status report for contract work done in October 2022.
1. Conjure development
* Completed tor-browser-build changes needed for tor browser integration
of conjure on desktop and mobile (not merged yet due to usability concerns)
* wrote a guide for integrating PTs with Tor Browser builds [0]
* Small client-side fixes for storing the assets directory
2. Snowflake web extension
* Worked on fixes for website and extension translations
* Updated polling frequency to help with proxy pool shortages
* Made progress on Firefox MV3 updates
* Reviewed and merged open MRs
3. Bridge reputation system
* Wrote a plan for client-side development options
[0]
https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/team/-/wikis/Tor-Browser-…
Hi! This is my status report for October 2022.
This month, I successfully resolved 1422 tickets.
On Telegram (@TorProjectSupportBot) - 1313
On RT (frontdesk@tpo) - 109
Due to censorship events in Iran, most requests (>1000) continue coming
from that country. In October, more users applied to us for assistance
in connecting to Tor and troubleshooting.
One hundred sixty-nine (169) Telegram requests came from Russia. Users
mostly asked for bridges or assistance in cases when bridges did not
work for them. Also, more than 20 requests came from Turkmenistan, where
internet censorship is getting even more severe.
In October, some changes were implemented to the @TorProjectSupportBot -
now, it allows users to pick the country from the list. Currently on the
list are Iran, China, Russia and Turkmenistan. That makes communication
easier and faster.
We continue getting requests from Kazakhstan users concerned about
internet censorship events that can happen in November 2022, when the
presidential election takes place. So we started to prepare a small
campaign offering Kazakhstan users to install Tor Browser beforehand
[1].
[1]
https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/onion-services/onion-support/-/issues/155
Hi everyone!
Here is my status report for October 2022.
At the beginning of the month, I continued the unification of our
desktop and Android patchset [0]. We had a few errors to correct, but
now we use the same branch from tor-browser.git for all our platforms.
One of the immediate consequences is that the Onion-Location header is
now recognized on Android, too. Starting with Tor Browser 12.0a4, you
can tell Tor Browser to prefer the .onion when possible [1].
After that, I worked on multi-lingual support for Tor Browser [2].
Starting with Tor Browser 12.0a4, we will ship only one
package/installer for each architecture with all the languages we
support. This change will make mirroring Tor Browser much easier,
slightly decrease the time to build releases, and dramatically reduce
the time to sign them.
Of course, 36 additional languages increase the archive size. Therefore,
we tried to remove files that were not actually used, like some images
and fonts in the offline copy of the manual [3].
Eventually, we even reduced the final build sizes by some hundreds of kB!
For the rest of the month, I have been resolving several smaller
problems, such as the bookmarks window not working on macOS [4],
problems that the new tor-launcher implementation caused, improvements
for the multi-lingual UX, typos, and more.
We are very excited about the coming 12.0, and we would love to hear any
feedback from you on the latest alphas [5]]!
Thanks,
Pier
[0]
https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/applications/tor-browser/-/issues/41308
[1]
https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/applications/tor-browser/-/issues/41394
[2]
https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/applications/tor-browser/-/issues/17400
[3]
https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/applications/tor-browser-build/-/issues/4…
[4]
https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/applications/tor-browser-build/-/issues/4…
[5] https://www.torproject.org/download/alpha/