Hi,
just because I am curious: can someone from the tor authority operators please explain what is going on the last days with tor authorities. This morning (europe) ides is not available.
Thanks,
Klaus
On Jan 13, 2012, at 9:31 AM, Klaus Layer wrote:
Hi,
just because I am curious: can someone from the tor authority operators please explain what is going on the last days with tor authorities. This morning (europe) ides is not available.
Thanks,
Klaus
We've had quite a bit of trouble making a consensus in the past few days, tho these issues have been resolved as of two days ago or so. There were quite a few maintenance issues with the dirauths, and not all have been resolved yet, but a large enough fraction should be online so this would continue without too much of a problem.
Ides is reachable for me, how are you testing that it is unavailable?
Sebastian
Sebastian Hahn mail@sebastianhahn.net wrote on 13.01.2012:
We've had quite a bit of trouble making a consensus in the past few days, tho these issues have been resolved as of two days ago or so. There were quite a few maintenance issues with the dirauths, and not all have been resolved yet, but a large enough fraction should be online so this would continue without too much of a problem.
Ides is reachable for me, how are you testing that it is unavailable?
Sebastian
Two of my nodes reported this morning that ides is unavailable:
09:09:31 [WARN] Received http status code 404 ("Not found") from server '216.224.124.114:9030' while fetching consensus directory.
09:22:43 [WARN] Received http status code 404 ("Not found") from server '216.224.124.114:9030' while fetching consensus directory.
But I just checked again
http://216.224.124.114:9030/tor/status-vote/current/consensus
and its working now.
Thanks for the quick response.
Regards,
Klaus
On Jan 13, 2012, at 11:06 AM, Klaus Layer wrote:
Sebastian Hahn mail@sebastianhahn.net wrote on 13.01.2012:
We've had quite a bit of trouble making a consensus in the past few days, tho these issues have been resolved as of two days ago or so. There were quite a few maintenance issues with the dirauths, and not all have been resolved yet, but a large enough fraction should be online so this would continue without too much of a problem.
Ides is reachable for me, how are you testing that it is unavailable?
Sebastian
Two of my nodes reported this morning that ides is unavailable:
09:09:31 [WARN] Received http status code 404 ("Not found") from server '216.224.124.114:9030' while fetching consensus directory.
09:22:43 [WARN] Received http status code 404 ("Not found") from server '216.224.124.114:9030' while fetching consensus directory.
But I just checked again
http://216.224.124.114:9030/tor/status-vote/current/consensus
and its working now.
Thanks for the quick response.
Regards,
Klaus
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.
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?
Because alpha tends to be pretty stable with tor, and the latest security fixes are in alpha a lot sooner.
Sent from my iPhone
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? _______________________________________________ tor-relays mailing list tor-relays@lists.torproject.org https://lists.torproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tor-relays
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.
Sebastian Hahn mail@sebastianhahn.net wrote on 13.01.2012:
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.
tor-relays mailing list tor-relays@lists.torproject.org https://lists.torproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tor-relays
But warnings like
13:28:48 [WARN] Received http status code 404 ("Not found") from server '216.224.124.114:9030' while fetching consensus directory.
are pretty new. I did not notice them the last several months. Therefore I think something happened.
Regards,
Klaus
On Jan 13, 2012, at 2:57 PM, Klaus Layer wrote:
Sebastian Hahn mail@sebastianhahn.net wrote on 13.01.2012:
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.
But warnings like
13:28:48 [WARN] Received http status code 404 ("Not found") from server '216.224.124.114:9030' while fetching consensus directory.
are pretty new. I did not notice them the last several months. Therefore I think something happened.
Regards,
Klaus
Yes, until a few days ago ides was - when it was online - voting along with the other dirauths. Now that the other dirauths upgraded, ides is left out and the warning happens. We might want to silence the warning, as we don't warn when a dirauth is totally offline, and the user can't actually do anything to fix this.
Sebastian Hahn mail@sebastianhahn.net wrote on 13.01.2012:
Yes, until a few days ago ides was - when it was online - voting along with the other dirauths. Now that the other dirauths upgraded, ides is left out and the warning happens. We might want to silence the warning, as we don't warn when a dirauth is totally offline, and the user can't actually do anything to fix this.
Thanks, got it.
tor-relays@lists.torproject.org
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Andrew Lewis -
Klaus Layer -
Sebastian Hahn -
Steve Snyder