[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):

 > Why do you even need to ‘test 'is this controller connection alive'’?

 The real question is "Why do stem's users need to ‘test 'is this
 controller connection alive'’?" - I don't need it within stem itself at
 the moment.

 In arm I check if tor is alive or not by looking for a 'heartbeat'. We're
 subscribed to BW events so I can say "If I haven't gotten a BW event in
 the last ten seconds then something is wrong". This is used to detect if
 tor crashes, or if it stops becoming responsive to the control port (for
 instance, is swapping and about to trigger the OOM killer). Other stem
 users would likely want a function to explicitly check if tor's alive
 rather than subscribe to BW events.

 I'm a little confused at this pushback. At work it's routine for services
 to have a ping health check so remote monitors can see if things are ok or
 not. Though again, I don't care very strongly about this.

-- 
Ticket URL: <https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/6354#comment:13>
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