[tor-bugs] #1890 [Tor Directory Authority]: Tor failed to make a consensus 2010/08/29 17:00

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#1890: Tor failed to make a consensus 2010/08/29 17:00
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 Reporter:  Sebastian                |          Owner:                    
     Type:  defect                   |         Status:  new               
 Priority:  major                    |      Milestone:  Tor: 0.2.3.x-final
Component:  Tor Directory Authority  |        Version:                    
 Keywords:                           |         Parent:                    
   Points:                           |   Actualpoints:                    
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Changes (by nickm):

  * priority:  normal => major
  * milestone:  Tor: 0.2.3.1-alpha => Tor: 0.2.3.x-final


Comment:

 Roger says:

 This is because authorities take just long enough to publish that not
 everybody gets the same view of who voted, so multiple consensuses with
 not enough signatures occur.

 He says that this bug occurs several times a week, at least.

 Roger also notes that the original report here seems to have happened when
 gabelmoo's clock jumped during voting.  I hope that isn't the reason this
 is happening often.


 I say that the  stuff to investigate here to make good progress is:

   * Are authorities' times really synchronized?  Are authorities starting
 to vote at _actually_ the same time?
   * Does it really take long enough to publish a vote that we hit race
 conditions?  If so, why?

 If our start times are desynchonized, we should fix that.  If publication
 takes too long, we should see if we can get it down.

 Otherwise, if these are the issues and they ''can't'' be easily fixed, we
 should examine whether we can allow more time for votes to arrive.

-- 
Ticket URL: <https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/1890#comment:12>
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