[tor-bugs] #29364 [Obfuscation/meek]: Tone down [WARN] log messages resulting from meek-client output

[Tor Bug Tracker & Wiki]

#29364: Tone down [WARN] log messages resulting from meek-client output
------------------------------+---------------------
 Reporter:  dcf               |          Owner:  dcf
     Type:  enhancement       |         Status:  new
 Priority:  Medium            |      Milestone:
Component:  Obfuscation/meek  |        Version:
 Severity:  Minor             |     Resolution:
 Keywords:                    |  Actual Points:
Parent ID:                    |         Points:
 Reviewer:                    |        Sponsor:
------------------------------+---------------------

Comment (by dcf):

 Replying to [comment:1 ahf]:
 > Shouldn't this be solved by making the log messages output the `LOG`
 message instead of writing to standard error?

 No, not necessarily; for example meek-client has a `--log` option to write
 the log to a file instead of stderr. We want that to still work.

 More generally, in my opinion the PT LOG mechanism is not meant to be a
 full replacement for application-level logging. I don't think
 ''everything'' a PT might care to log should be written by default to the
 tor log.

 Also, remember that tor is not the only consumer of PTs. The LOG feature
 is brand new, not even documented yet in the public pt-spec.txt, and
 barely in any released versions of tor. It's not something PTs can widely
 rely on to be present yet (especially as older versions of tor will
 deadlock if a PT uses LOG too much!).

 In this particular case, clearly, the defaults are bad and ''something''
 needs to change, because we should not be surfacing a user-visible
 warning. It's not necessarily tor's responsibility to fix it, but it could
 be. I'm not sure that WARN-by-default is the right choice: it's enforcing
 a contract on PTs that never existed before, and also isn't reflected in
 the spec. In this case, meek-client doesn't write ''that'' much to stderr,
 so making a change in meek-client is probably the sensible thing to do.

--
Ticket URL: <https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/29364#comment:3>
Tor Bug Tracker & Wiki <https://trac.torproject.org/>
The Tor Project: anonymity online