[tor-bugs] #24456 [Core Tor/Tor]: Figure out what to do with the guardfraction feature

Tor Bug Tracker & Wiki blackhole at torproject.org
Fri Feb 16 22:19:53 UTC 2018


#24456: Figure out what to do with the guardfraction feature
-------------------------------------------------+-------------------------
 Reporter:  asn                                  |          Owner:  (none)
     Type:  defect                               |         Status:
                                                 |  needs_review
 Priority:  Medium                               |      Milestone:  Tor:
                                                 |  0.3.3.x-final
Component:  Core Tor/Tor                         |        Version:
 Severity:  Normal                               |     Resolution:
 Keywords:  tor-dirauth, tor-guard, review-      |  Actual Points:
  group-32                                       |
Parent ID:                                       |         Points:  2
 Reviewer:  mikeperry                            |        Sponsor:
-------------------------------------------------+-------------------------

Comment (by mikeperry):

 After catching up on the related bugs (#13297, #16255), it seems like the
 reason this is being killed is because of the lack of unit test support to
 take in all inputs for a consensus (votes, bw auth files, guardfraction
 files) and produce a consensus, and then examine that consensus for
 expected results for both values and client usage. If we had that, it
 would be much easier to verify that the fix in #16255 is sufficient,
 right?

 If that is true, then I would rather obsolete the torrc options for now
 without removing any code, and file a ticket for better consensus testing
 support. There have been several other path selection tickets where I
 wished I just had a full consensus to check behavior against, rather than
 cobbling together a mock or tiny chutney network...

 Once we have such a testing mechanism, it will be much easier to bring
 this code back with torrc options like GuardFractionV2File (since in
 #16255 we already discussed changing the format slightly), rather than
 ripping it out and starting over completely from scratch. We need the
 guardfraction feature (or something like it) less since we have backed off
 from infinite guard lifetimes, but I don't think the need is now zero.

--
Ticket URL: <https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/24456#comment:14>
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