[network-health] Please upgrade your "BostonUCompSci" Tor relay running 0.2.9.17

[Georg Koppen]

Hi!

Paul Stauffer:
> Hi Georg.  I was taking a look at this, and the reason our node is still on
> 0.2.9.17 is because that's still the latest version published in EPEL for
> CentOS 6.  Any plans to push 0.3.5 to EPEL6?  As Steve mentioned, we do plan
> to replace our node's hardware soon, which will involve an OS upgrade to
> CentOS 7 or 8.  But there may be other nodes out there besides ours that are
> still running CentOS 6, so updating the tor package in EPEL for them would
> be a quick way to get all of them upgraded.
> 
> Related to this, I recall that years ago the Tor Project used to run its own
> yum repo that got more frequent updates than EPEL (looks like EPEL only gets
> the LTS versions).  We only switched to EPEL when the "official" repo went
> away.  Are there any plans to bring that back, to make it easy to keep nodes
> updated with all the new releases?

Thanks for asking. Well, on the positive side, we actually have this
repository back[1] thanks to a volunteer spending time on the packaging
effort. On the flip side, though, CentOS 6 is not supported there (yet)
only version 7 and 8. CentOS 6 will be end-of-life later this year and I
heard it is sufficiently old that the packaging scripts available for
version 7 and 8 need to get bigger changes to have a chance working for
CentOS 6 at all. I am not sure whether our volunteer will get to it and
whether the effort is actually worth it in this case.

So, I'd assume the "best" path forward for you or anyone else who is
stuck on CentOS 6 right now is to compile Tor themselves. We don't have
any official documentation for that, though. :( But we could easily put
it somewhere on our wiki[2] if someone came up with instructions. :)

I know it's not a great answer but I at least don't have a better one
for you at this point, alas...

Georg

[1] https://rpm.torproject.org/
[2] https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor

> best,
> - Paul
> 
> On Wed, Feb 26, 2020 at 08:51:03AM +0100, Georg Koppen wrote:
>> Hi Steve!
>>
>> Nadas, Stephen:
>>> Hi Georg, 
>>>
>>> Do you have a more specific timeframe than "we will soon"?  
>>>
>>> I ask because currently there are ongoing discussions with the interested user as to how best to replace the hardware that runs this relay.  Everything being equal we would wait for the new solution and then change the software.  But will take some time (weeks easily) so if we have an idea what you are thinking that would be helpful for us to plan. 
>>
>> I don't have an exact date for you. Here is what I answered another
>> operator asking essentially the same questions:
>>
>> """
>> It's not exactly set yet. We want to make the change in Tor's 0.4.4
>> timeframe.[1] And the feature freeze of it is scheduled for May 2020
>> with backports of the delisting patch for stable versions, so Directory
>> Authorities can start applying it. So, I'd say while not a matter of
>> days it's a matter of some weeks which is why we start contacting
>> operators now.
>> """
>>
>> Hope this helps,
>> Georg
>>
>> [1] https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/32672
>>
>>> Thanks,
>>> Steve 
>>>
>>> -----Original Message-----
>>> From: support-bounces at cs-mailman.bu.edu <support-bounces at cs-mailman.bu.edu> On Behalf Of Georg Koppen
>>> Sent: Tuesday, February 25, 2020 7:36 AM
>>> To: tor at cs.bu.edu
>>> Cc: Network Health <network-health at lists.torproject.org>
>>> Subject: Please upgrade your "BostonUCompSci" Tor relay running 0.2.9.17
>>>
>>> Hi,
>>>
>>> You are running a Tor relay, which is great:
>>>
>>> http://rougmnvswfsmd4dq.onion/rs.html#search/94C4B7B8C50C86A92B6A20107539EE2678CF9A28
>>>
>>> But that Tor version is obsolete, and because of old bugs, we will soon
>>> cut relays running those versions out of the network. Please consider
>>> upgrading!
>>>
>>> You can find Tor packages and instructions for your distro / OS here:
>>> https://community.torproject.org/relay/setup/guard/
>>>
>>> Ideally you will switch to keeping up with our stable releases, but if
>>> you need a stable that is especially stable, the Tor 0.3.5 branch will
>>> be maintained until Feb 2022:
>>>
>>> https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/wiki/org/teams/NetworkTeam/CoreTorReleases#Current
>>>
>>> and you can see the lifetimes of other Tor versions on that table too.
>>>
>>> Let us know if we can do anything to make the process easier.
>>>
>>> And lastly, I am cc'ing the new network health mailing list (which
>>> has public archives), to help us stay synced:
>>>
>>> https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/wiki/org/teams/NetworkHealthTeam
>>>
>>> Thanks!
>>> Georg
>>>
>>
>>
> 
> 
> 
> 


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