[tor-project] Network team meeting notes from 19 Feb 2019

Nick Mathewson nickm at torproject.org
Thu Feb 21 20:07:41 UTC 2019


Hi!

Our logs are available at
http://meetbot.debian.net/tor-meeting/2019/tor-meeting.2019-02-19-17.58.html

Below are the contents of our pad:

= Network team meeting pad! =

This week's team meeting is at Tuesday 19 February at 1800 UTC on
#tor-meeting on OFTC, because Monday is a US public holiday.

Welcome to our meeting!
First meeting each month: Tuesday at 2300 UTC
Other meetings each month: Mondays at 1800 UTC
On #tor-meeting on OFTC.

February schedule:
    * Monday 11 February at 1800 UTC
    * Monday 18 February at 1800 UTC Tuesday 18 Feburary at 1800 UTC
(moved because of holiday)
    * Monday 25 February at 1800 UTC

March schedule:
    * Tuesday 5 March at 2300 UTC


(This channel is logged while meetings are in progress.)
(See https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-project/2017-September/001459.html
for background.)

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!

After each week's meetings, the contents of this pad will be sent to
tor-project @ lists.torproject.org.  After that is done, the pad can
be used for the next week.

== Previous notes ==
(Search the list archive for older notes.)
8 Jan: https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-project/2019-January/002155.html
14 Jan: https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-project/2019-January/002170.html
22 Jan: https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-project/2019-January/002184.html
11 Feb: https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-project/2019-February/002214.html

== Stuff to do every week =

* Let's check and update the roadmap.  What's done, and what's coming up?

We're using a kanban now:
https://storm.torproject.org/shared/_mx8PMGOHFBOximocl1gy3COvhLPr6k3Ja7JA1vNIXr


* Check reviewer assignments!

Here are the needs-review tickets, by reviewer:
    https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/query?status=needs_review&reviewer=!&max=300&col=id&col=summary&col=reviewer&col=status&col=type&col=priority&col=milestone&col=component&order=reviewer&report=82

Here are the outstanding reviews, oldest first:
    https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/query?status=needs_review&component=Core+Tor%2FTor&col=id&col=summary&col=status&col=type&col=priority&col=milestone&col=changetime&col=reviewer&col=keywords&order=changetime

Including sbws:
    https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/query?status=needs_review&component=Core+Tor%2FTor&or&status=needs_review&component=Core+Tor%2Fsbws&col=id&col=summary&col=status&col=type&col=priority&col=milestone&col=changetime&col=reviewer&col=keywords&order=changetime

* Also, let's check for things we need update on our spreadsheet!  Are
there important documents we should link to?  Things we should
archive?

* Check rotations at
https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/wiki/org/teams/NetworkTeam/TeamRotations
  Core Tor/sbws is now part of the bug triage, CI, and reviewer assignment roles

== Reminders ==

* Remember to "/me status: foo" at least once daily.
* Remember that our current code reviews should be done by end-of-week.
* Make sure you are in touch with everybody with whom you are doing
work for the next releases

* Remember to fill up actual point when you finish a task (as well as
update the estimate when starting the issue).
* Add planned PTO to the calendar
https://storm.torproject.org/shared/ISA5L5nH0Xu88iqSCx9ZjCXYSMKOBTdbUeWarbdGmxx

* Check other's people call for help in their entries.

-------------------------------
---- 19 February 2019
-------------------------------

== Announcements ==

- Onion Services proposal was accepted and we are starting with it on
April.  We will probably do only minimal work on it until S19 is done,
though.

- The master branch is now 0.4.1.x; 0.4.0 development will continue in
maint-0.4.0.


== Discussion ==

=== Release Planning ===

* Teor wants the trac milestones to be smaller, so we can actually do
most of the work in the milestones.
How does everyone feel about that? << I think it would be useful to
discuss Teor's thoughts when Teor is in the room >> [[+1 but if we're
going to do that we should have a plan to schedule such a discussion]]
<< Yes >>
Is it a useful goal?

What can we do differently, so we have better milestones?
What is one thing that we can change in the next month?

Here are our release planning notes from Brussels:
    https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/wiki/org/meetings/2019BrusselsNetworkTeam/Notes/ReleasePlanning

In December 2018, teor suggested a new process, but it didn't work out:
    https://pad.riseup.net/p/network-team-triage-2018

=== Policy planning ===

* We don't have a great way to set and adopt development/support
policies.  How would we feel about this:

       Let's have policies start out as "draft".  If we think a policy
could maybe
       work out, let's call it "experimental", post it publicly, and
try it out for
       a limited amount of time. And then let's see whether we need to
amend it or adopt
       it or discard it entirely based on network-team rough consensus.

== Recommended links ==

Signal uses fixed-size, overlapping range requests to hide the exact
length of its previews:
    https://signal.org/blog/i-link-therefore-i-am/
    Could we use a similar technique in Tor Browser to hide sizes from
the network?
    (The application and the remote site know the real size.
Everything else just sees fixed-size HTTPS.)

How teams produce great outcomes (a long read, but a good one):
    https://the-composition.com/the-origins-of-opera-and-the-future-of-programming-bcdaf8fbe960

== Updates ==

NOTE NEW FORMAT!

Name:
    Week of XYZ (planned):
        - What you planned for last week.
    Week of XYZ (actual):
        - What you did last week.
    Week of ABC (planned):
        - What you're planning to do this week.
    Help with:

     - Something you may need help with.



PLEASE DO NOT BULK-DELETE THE OLD ENTRIES!

Leave the "Planned" parts!
Leave the parts for last week and this week!


gaba:

Week of 02/11 (actual):

- get roadmap into the wiki

- gathering documentation on software development practices at the
network team <-- if you have anything documented send it my way

Week of 02/19 (planned:

- look at releases estimation

- look at processes and make a proposal on decision making (so far all
documentes found here
https://gitlab.com/gabelula/tor-documentation-processes)


teor: (offline)

Weeks since hackfest:
    - FOSDEM
    - Travel
    - Time off for extra hours during travel and hackfest
    - Answering some urgent emails

Week of 18 Feb (planned):
    Roadmap Coding (3 days per week):
        - PrivCount proof of concept (#29004 and related tickets)
        - unit tests for extra-info documents (#29018)
    Other:
        - Reviews
        - Email, IRC, and ticket backlog
        - Finish travel reimbursements
        - Ask metrics to monitor bootstrap speed (from Sponsor 8, but
worth doing anyway)
            - If we get bad results, tweak bootstrap settings to work:
                - when lots of fallbacks are down, and
                - on networks that drop packets
              (deferred from Sponsor 8, we'll only do it if it is necessary)

Week of 18 Feb (actual):
    Roadmap Coding (3 days per week):
        - Finished #29017 - stats bug fix
        - Almost finished #29018 - stats bug fix, refactor, and unit
tests for extra-info documents (PrivCount preparation)
    Other:
        - A little bit of post-travel admin

    Help with:
        These unit test errors are new in master:
        (I found them on macOS using clang)
            #29527 - Division by zero: undefined behaviour in
circuitpadding/circuitpadding_sample_distribution test (mikeperry is
on this one)
            #29529 - util/map_anon_nofork test fails on macOS (nickm
is on this one)
            #29530 - Some address/get_if_addrs* tests fail when the
network is unreachable [when did this start?]

        I still have 1 coding day left this week.
        I'd like to do #27162 (rust versions CI) next, but let me know
if there's something urgent I could do.


Nick:

Week of 11 Feb (planned):

- Identify remaining 040-must stuff

- Fix some 040-must bugs; defer other 040 stuff.

- Write a proposal about correct way to do onionbalance in v3 onion services

- Maybe, write a proposal about "personalization" of the Tor network
to prevent test network crossover.

- Check OSS-Fuzz timeout issues to make sure they are false positives

- "Evaluate" bridge statistics. (#29269)

- Experiment with chutney & CI.


Week of 11 Feb (actual):

- Wrote a draft onionbalance-with-v3-onionservices proposal; asked asn
and dgoulet for feedback

- Started a draft proposal about network personalities based on
suggestion from teor in Brussels

- Looked at Chutney + Travis + CI status; learned tried to figure out
what's broken

- Revised fast_rng branch based on comments from asn (thanks asn)

- Merged some pending 040 branches

- Discussion with possible funders/collaborators

- Read most session notes from brussels


Week of 18 Feb (planned):

- Write final onionbalance-with-v3-onionservices proposal (thanks, asn
and dgoulet!)

- Finish personalization proposal

- Change master to 0.4.1; create maint-0.4.0 and release-0.4.0 branches (done)

- Write proposed policy for merging stuff (done)

- Discuss proposed merge policy; make public version.

- Releases for 0.3.3 and later.

- Merge and announce fix for TROVE-2019-001 (thanks dgoulet)

- Discuss chutney+ci findings with teor.

- Update pubsub branch as needed/useful. Check in with catalyst.

- Start looking at bridge stats status for #29269

- meet with researchers about datagrams, performance, etc.  Mike,
please answer the scheduling email ASAP?

- Reply to a large pile of emails

- ADL discussion

- Prop 300

- Consensus options proposal idea

- and so much more...

- Decide what is left in 0.4.0.  I need help here.

- CI / Coverity rotation: look at jenkins failures (like #29534),
OSS-fuzz timeouts, etc



dgoulet:
  Week of 11 Feb (actual):
    - Deploy a local BridgeDB so I can start using and testing it.
    - Many many discussions about how to address #29427.
    - I've (mistakenly!) merge #29023 (fast prng) so I can now use it for
      prop#289.
    - Some other ticket merging and review.
    - Updated #29391 with my merging scripts.
    - Opened a bunch of BridgeDB tickets for quick tasks.
    - Got my bridgedb.git and bridgedb-admin.git repositories!
  Week of 19 Feb (planned):
    - Follow up work on all the BridgeDB tickets.
    - Put prop#289 in review that will now use #29023 fast prng.
    - Follow up on many email thread I have opened.


Mike:

  Week of 2/11 (actual)
    - Spend some time digging deep into KIST and EWMA; filed #29294 after
    - Looked at asn's branch for #29298 - looked good so far
    - Looked into #29174
    - Worked on #29204; have a draft patch almost ready for dgoulet
  Week of 2/21 (planned):
    - Get #29204 branch ready for dgoulet
    - Hopefully start on #28780
    - Vanguards package announcement
  Need Help With:
    - Running unittests under Wine to try to reproduce #29500
      - Is https://github.com/ahf/tor-win32/ the best way to do this?

catalyst:
    week of 02/11 (2019-W07) (planned):
        - expense reporting
        - more review of #28226
        - other reviews
        - bug triage rotation
    week of 02/11 (2019-W07) (actual):
        - more review of #28226 (posted some comments on github)
        - bug triage (nothing much)
        - medical bureaucracy
        - talked with ahf et al re shellcheck, bash vs POSIX sh... (#29485)
    week of 02/18 (2019-W08) (planned):
        - expense reporting
        - #28226 review
        - other reviews

juga (offline):

Week 11 Feb (plannned):
    - Register for the Demoday to present the bandwidth scanner
(https://prototypefund.de/demo-day/)
    - Continue with Include scanner country and Web server country in
the bandwidth file header (#29299)
    - Continue with Write technical overview on how sbws works(#29149)
    - Continue with Adapt bandwidth file classes to be compatible with
stem (descriptors, etc) documents (#29057)
    - Consider implementing When sbws stops making progress, log a
warning (#28652)
    - Consider implementing other children tickets to solve Monitor
relays that are not measured by each sbws instance (#28547)

Week 11 Feb (actual):
    - Included scanner country and Web server country in the bandwidth
file header (#29299)
    - Wrote technical overview on how sbws works(#29149)
    - Continued Report relays that sbws sees in the consensus, but
never chooses to test (#28566)
    - Revised ResultDump.queue.put() can hang if the queue is full (#28866)

Week 18 Feb (plan):
    - Continue with Adapt bandwidth file classes to be compatible with
stem (descriptors, etc) documents (#29057)
    - Work out how long it takes sbws to measure the network (#28983)
    - When sbws stops making progress, log a warning (#28652)
    - Prepare presentation for the DemoDay
    - Revisions

Need help with:
    - To release sbws 1.0.3 next week, reviewing #28897 is critical,
to confirm whether sbws doesn't stall. If it doesn't, several tickets
in milestone 1.0 can be closed and the remaining 1.0 milestone tickets
are minor changes/easy.

asn:
   [Did not know that meeting would be on Tuesday this week and
arranged social stuff for the evening. Will try to attend if possible
anyhow.]
   Week of 02/11 (planned):
    - Lots of review backlog.
    - Start looking at February's roadmap.
    - Start a tor-researchers thread about WTF-PAD projects.
   Week of 02/11 (actual):
    - Finished up reviews.
    - Start working on roadmap task #29298. I made a spec and code branch for
      Mike to check out.
    - Started WTF-PAD thread for researchers.
    - Read Karsten's scaling email.
    - Reviewed draft onionbalance v3 proposal.
   Week of 02/18 (planned):
    - Move towards finishing up #29298 after getting Mike's feedback.
    - Discuss more about WTF-PAD future.
    - Start looking into roadmap task #29221.
    - Do reviews.
    - If time permits, read Tim's response to "walking onions" thread wrt onion
      services.
   Help with:

ahf:
Week of 2/11 (planned)
    Sponsor 19:
        - Review dcf's uTLS changes to meek-lite.
        - Continue with architecture document in #28848
        - Create the goptlibext library after discussing with dcf on #28940
        - Make progress with NGO discussion with arma and cohosh.
    Misc (and might need some help with, but most likely from weasel):
        - Solve the Windows CI issue that I didn't finish before meeting.
Week of 2/11 (actually)
    Sponsor 19:
        - Uploaded the goptlibext library to https://github.com/ahf/goptlibext/
          (STATUS and LOG support) and said OK to DCF's Log matches
for gotptlib in #28940.
        - Brainstorm with cohosh about the Snowflake protocol:
          https://github.com/ahf/snowflake-notes/blob/master/Protocol.markdown
        - Broker architecture draft document at
          https://github.com/ahf/snowflake-notes/blob/master/Broker.markdown
(these
          two will move off GH as soon as we have the GL)
        - Looked at Kat's report #2. Need to write down some feedback.
        - Reviewed dcf's uTLS changes to meek-lite.
        - Read a lot of Go and webstandard documents about Go, modern
          JavaScript, and other things I haven't stayed up-to-date with over
the years.
    Misc:
        - Lots of reviews in the network team backlog due to us being
AFK to Brussels
Week of 2/18 (planned)
    Sponsor 19:
        - Send feedback to Kat about Report #2.
        - Collect some feedback from arma & cohosh about Broker.markdown.
        - Begin the work on protocol changes in the Snowflake codebase
together with cohosh.


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