[tor-bugs] #25511 [Core Tor/Tor]: Expose TZ info on control port for better debugging of time errors

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#25511: Expose TZ info on control port for better debugging of time errors
-------------------------------------------------+-------------------------
 Reporter:  nickm                                |          Owner:  neel
     Type:  enhancement                          |         Status:
                                                 |  merge_ready
 Priority:  Medium                               |      Milestone:  Tor:
                                                 |  0.3.4.x-final
Component:  Core Tor/Tor                         |        Version:
 Severity:  Normal                               |     Resolution:
 Keywords:  roadmap, controller, 034-roadmap-    |  Actual Points:
  master, 034-triage-20180328,                   |
  034-included-20180328, s8-errors               |
Parent ID:                                       |         Points:
 Reviewer:  catalyst                             |        Sponsor:
                                                 |  Sponsor8
-------------------------------------------------+-------------------------

Comment (by mcs):

 Replying to [comment:27 catalyst]:
 > On Linux, Tor Browser "7.5a8 (based on Mozilla Firefox 52.5.0) (64-bit)"
 with a custom config to log to a file on disk, the log file shows local
 time stamps but the "Copy Tor Log To Clipboard" button shows UTC time
 stamps.  The disk files have log levels in lowercase, while the clipboard
 logs have them in uppercase.  These imply that Tor Launcher might be
 postprocessing logs a little, or might be using control channel events to
 get log messages.

 Tor Launcher gets this info via the control port. It uses `SETEVENTS` to
 monitor `NOTICE`,  `WARN`, and `ERR` events. When an event is received,
 Tor Launcher records the current timestamp (by creating a new JavaScript
 `Date()` object). When the user asks to copy the log to the clipboard,
 timestamps are converted to strings. Because the entire browser is running
 with UTC as the timezone, the timestamps that are output are UTC. But I am
 a little surprised that `tor` is not started with `TZ=UTC` (we patch the
 Firefox code to set TZ to UTC early during browser startup).

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Ticket URL: <https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/25511#comment:31>
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