On Jan 13, 2012, at 1:40 PM, Andrew Lewis wrote:
Because alpha tends to be pretty stable with tor, and the latest security fixes are in alpha a lot sooner.
On Jan 13, 2012, at 12:21 PM, Steve Snyder swsnyder@snydernet.net wrote:
On 01/13/2012 05:27 AM, Sebastian Hahn wrote:
Ah, I see. ides not having a current consensus is different from ides being down. Ides still is running the stable Tor version and needs to be upgraded to 0.2.3.x to be allowed to vote along with the other dirauths, so it doesn't immediately know about the new consensus. I don't know when ides will be upgraded, but I hope the answer is soon.
Why do the authorities run an Alpha version of Tor instead of the (presumably less buggy) latest Stable version?
I wouldn't quite agree with Andrew's statement here. We do make sure to backport security fixes and release stable versions whenever there's an issue so that the users of our stable series aren't at risk.
There's a different reason why the directory authorities run alpha versions of Tor. At some point, new features don't get into stable anymore (that's why it's called stable), so the risk of introducing new bugs accidentally is smaller and also so that users of the stable series don't have to upgrade as often (this is what stable refers to, hopefully not needing to upgrade very often). This means that new features that enhance the safety of the Tor network as a whole often don't get into the current stable version so that development effort can focus on stabilizing the current alpha version. This time, a new consensus method has been implemented, and I chose not to base that feature on the stable branch for the above-mentioned reasons. This consensus method means that more dirauths need to be malicious to set a certain network parameter in the consensus. The only relays who need that change are the dirauths, and the whole network automatically benefits.
Hope that made it clearer, if not, ask away.