[tor-project] Network team meeting notes, 8 Jan 2018

Nick Mathewson nickm at torproject.org
Mon Jan 8 19:01:13 UTC 2018


Happy new year!

Our meeting logs are visible here:

http://meetbot.debian.net/tor-meeting/2018/tor-meeting.2018-01-08-17.59.html

And below are the contents of our pad:

======
Network team meeting pad, 8 January 2018

"My first name is a random set of numbers and letters
And other alphanumerics that changes hourly forever
My last name, a thousand vowels fading down a sinkhole
To a susurrus" -- Aesop Rock, "Shrunk"


Welcome to our meeting!  Every Monday at 1700 UTC 1800 UTC on
#tor-meeting on OFTC.  (This channel is logged while meetings are in
progress.)

Want to participate?  Awesome!  Here's what to do:
    1. If you have updates, enter them below, under your name.
    2. If you see anything you want to talk about in your updates, put
them in boldface!
    3. Show up to the IRC meeting and say hi!

Note the meeting location: #tor-meeting on OFTC!
 (See https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-project/2017-September/001459.html
for background.)

Meeting notes from last week meeting:
    * https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-project/2017-December/001602.html


Old Announcements:
    - On the roadmap spreadsheet: Please take january tasks.  (If
somebody else has already taken something you want, please talk to
them and/or add yourself too.)
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Ufrun1khEo5Cwd6OwngERn829wU3W3eskdrriaYfUBQ/edit?usp=sharing
    - Soon it will be It is now time to triage 0.3.3.x tickets.
Please make yourself the owner of tickets in that milestone that you
will do.
    - The meeting time is now 1800 UTC.
    - Let's have some proposal discussions. Isis kicked off the process here:
      https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-dev/2017-December/012666.html
    - We are planning a single-day pre-planned highly-focused hackfest
before the Rome Tor meeting
        - teor: Jon says we will have a venue for the pre-Rome hackfest
        - komlo: Should there be a Rust update/planning session?  What
should we prepare/do beforehand to help this be
planned/highly-focused?
    - Please check in with the roadmap; december is almost over as a
working month!  What isn't getting done? How are we doing?



Announcements:
    - Tor 0.3.2.8-rc came out two weeks ago
    - review-group-28 is open, there are 11 tickets left in needs_review:

      https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/query?status=needs_review&keywords=~review-group-28&col=id&col=summary&col=keywords&col=status&col=owner&col=type&col=reviewer&order=priority

    - 0.3.2.9 should come out tomorrow



Discussion:
    - strategy/plan for addressing current network issues.
       dgoulet, nickm, teor, isis try to figure it out.
       [dgoulet] +1, I would like to know what is the current status
as the information is a bit
                 scattered around in too many emails :S.
    * Let's come up with gsoc ideas .  In Rust? []
    * Is our team days for Rome "final" (as in, can one book flight
tickets now - they are cheap from .dk right now) ? [I think so, but
please confirm with Jon? -nickm]



teor:
    - Last few weeks:
        - PrivCount fixes
        - Code reviews
        - Tried to help relay ops with network load issues
        - Made the fallback list easier to parse, and added a spec
        - Did a fallback directory rebuild with pastly, we're going to
merge the new list soon
        - Revised some of the IPv6 patches
    - This week:
        - Implement (more) PrivCount onion service stats
        - Get the test network running new IPv6 consensus code
        - Specify a common format for the authority list and fallback list

pastly: fallback directory stuff (code review and script running) with teor

asn:
  Last weeks:
  - Continued reviewing #13837 and #23101. Some bugs were found that need to be
    addressed before merging this patchset, but looking pretty promising so far.
    Currently testing the old branch, and waiting for a new branch
from mike to test further.
  - Also reviewed #24634.
  - Helped triage remaining 0.3.2 bugs.
  - Found two more prop224 bugs on my clients and services. Notified dgoulet
    (they are on the pad) about them but still not in trac. They seem rare
    enough that they shouldn't delay 032 release.
  - Removed the guardfraction feature from the codebase (#24456).
  - Attended CCC and participated in the Tor Q&A. Had various discussions about
    Tor, onion services and their use cases, bandwidth authorities,
mixnets, etc.
  - Did some more thinking on what to do about the future of bandwidth
    authorities. Did a post with future avenues:
    https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-dev/2017-December/012703.html
    and also discussed with a few people how to pick it up in the future, but
    we should certainly prioritize inside the network team for this to work.
  - Helped with a Tor meetup in Athens:
    https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/wiki/org/meetings/AthensTorMeetupJan18
    Some people volunteered to implement the name system proposal for Tor. I'm
    not hyper confident about this, but I'll do a meeting with them and see
    where it goes.
  This week:
  - Handle any remaining post-holiday post-CCC backlog.
  - Continue testing #13837 and #23101.
  - Attend RWC in Zurich. Hoping that this will refresh my brain with some more
    research stuff and talk to more people about Tor.

Nick:
    Last week:
        * Worked on bugs
        * Triaged all vacation email; caught up some.
        * Wrote PETS reviews
        * Tried to merge things and stay up-to-date
        * Fixed windows and rust+arm failures on jenkins
        * Tried to triage away some 032 issues
        * COPE WITH SNOWSTORM
    This week:
        * Release 0.3.2.9-something:
            * With Geoip update
            * With fallback-dirs update.
            * Should it be called "stable"?
        * Update stable releases too, perhaps?
        * inbox zero
        * Review some tickets in review-group-28
        * Followup on proposal 285 (utf-8)
        * Followup on proposal 286 (hibernation API)
        * Pick final set of 033 tickets to hack on.
        * COPE WITH MELTING SNOW

Mike:
    Last week/break:
        - Got back from break, dealt with email and paperwork
        - Tried to keep up with DoS discussions and CBT-related tickets
    This week:
        - Work on #13837 and #23101
        - CBT-related DoS tickets. Am I needed on any? (I've CCed you on some)

dgoulet:
  Last week:
    - AFK.
  This week:
    - Coming back to life. Dealing with backlog this morning.
    - Organize the remaining work I need to do before the feature freeze which
      includes either going through the 580+ tor-bugs@ email I got or just
      mark them as read and look at Trac instead so I don't go too mad.
    - I want to follow up on the network load situation to see where we are at
      with the team.
    - Review, Patch, Review, Test, Repeat...

ahf:
    Last week('ish'):
        Sponsor 8:
            - Met with Benjamin from The Guardian Project at 34c3 to talk about
              his issues with Tor memory limits on Apple iOS.
            - Been investigating memory patterns in Tor using DTrace
and instruments (macOS tool).
            - Wrote an experimental patch to add DTrace probes in Tor
              (https://gitlab.com/ahf/tor/tree/feature/dtrace)
            - Did the Q4 reporting for S8 (before the holidays).
        Misc:
            - Went to 34c3 and went to all the Tor things I could find
              scheduled :-)
    This week:
        Sponsor 4:
            - Look into GeKo's #24826 (LZMA speed problems with Tor Browser).
            - Zstd parameter tuning (#24368)
        Sponsor 8:
            - Talk with David about his tracing (src/trace) code in Tor and
              what the long term roadmap is.
            - Finish DTrace patch and ensure it works nicely on macOS
and FreeBSD.
                - Look into using SystemTap for Linux (DTrace'ish system
                  with same API, but works on Linux).
        Misc:
            - Help out with release issues(?)

komlo:

- It would be helpful for someone to review #23881 (wrap tor's logging
system for use from Rust) - I have some questions about what level of
refactoring we want/need on the C side

- This week: At RWC!


catalyst:
    Last week (2018-W01):
        - reviewed some code (including #24733 unaligned access)
        - investigation for #24661 (accept reasonably live consensus
for guard selection)
        - dealing with contractors
        - fighting virus
    This week (2018-W02):
        - work on #24661
        - summarize possible guard selection timestamp issues
        - look over Pari's user queries/errors list for sponsor8 purposes
        - possible follow up about free() macro single-evaluation stuff
        - follow up about CoC stuff as it arises
        - more dealing with contractors (the joys of discovering
previous owner's deferred maintenance items!)
        - still fighting virus


isabela:
    January is the last month for sponsor4 so I am working on closing
that up. Still dont know the status on Moat (isis: any update?)
    sponsor8 Q4 report is due in January so I will be working on that
and pinging - nick, alex and catalyst for help whenever needed [this
is due Jan 31 - I have other priorities, so I might actually be done
by end of the month on this one - does this timeframe helps? Timeframe
on that? -nickm]
    I also plan on working on organizing the network team - so we can
get started on 2018; might recruit some people for help on that too
[please grab me to help as needed. let me know in advance -nickm -
will do!]
    Submitted proposal for OTF that includes .onion services work
(during holidays)


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