[tor-bugs] #6354 [Tor Client]: Tor control protocol should support pre-auth PING command to check if socket is not closed

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#6354: Tor control protocol should support pre-auth PING command to check if
socket is not closed
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 Reporter:  gsathya         |          Owner:                  
     Type:  enhancement     |         Status:  new             
 Priority:  minor           |      Milestone:  Tor: unspecified
Component:  Tor Client      |        Version:                  
 Keywords:  needs-proposal  |         Parent:                  
   Points:                  |   Actualpoints:                  
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Comment(by atagar):

 > Is this ticket still something that gsathya / atagar want?

 It would be nice, but isn't important to me. The history behind this
 ticket is that stem's method to check if we still have a live tor
 connection is a bit of a hack. It checks (a) if we've closed the socket on
 our side or (b) we tried to send a message but the following recv() told
 us the socket was closed...

 https://gitweb.torproject.org/stem.git/blob/HEAD:/stem/socket.py#l137

 In short, we can't tell if we have a working control connection except by
 using it, and we can't use it prior to authentication without losing it.

 Sathyanarayanan submitted a patch to do is_alive() checks by making a
 GETINFO query, but I didn't like this due the pre-auth issue. I then
 proposed a PING method and hence this ticket.

 My preference would actually be to both add a PING method and stop
 overzealously disconnecting the socket prior to authentication, but if we
 do neither it's not a big whoop.

-- 
Ticket URL: <https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/6354#comment:11>
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