[tor-relays] Tor Weather (was: Relay advocate introduction)

Thu May 17 21:48:38 UTC 2018

I don't know if it's helpful, but I use pulseway.com to monitor my relay
(aand all of my other servers).

On Thu, May 17, 2018 at 5:40 PM Colin Childs <colin at torproject.org> wrote:

> Hello Nusenu,
>
> Thank you for bringing this up and filing the ticket, this definitely
> sounds like something that should be brought back in some form. I’m going
> to look things over, review the history of Tor Weather and then make a plan
> for moving this forward.
>
> A monitoring service (like Tor Weather) has also been requested from a few
> other operators as well; so I think this is definitely something that will
> make the community happier as a whole.
>
> > On May 17, 2018, at 2:44 PM, nusenu <nusenu-lists at riseup.net> wrote:
> >
> > Colin Childs:
> >> I would love to hear from all of you with the things you would find
> >> most helpful from me / the Tor Project
> > I believe the most useful tool for relay operators and
> > the tor network as a whole would be to bring back Tor Weather.
> >
> > I filed it as
> > https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/26124
> >
> >
> > Full text bellow
> > ---------------------------------
> > TL;DR: I believe Tor Weather is the most efficient way to achieve and
> maintain a healthy Tor network on the long run.
> >
> > This is an item on the metrics team road map ("Q4 2018 or later") but
> maybe the new relay advocate (Colin) can help with this?
> >
> > Tor Weather has been discontinued on 2016-04-04,
> > see Karsten's email for the reasoning behind it:
> > https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-relays/2016-April/009009.html
> > but as he says "Tor Weather is still a good idea, it just needs somebody
> to implement it."
> >
> > How Tor Weather looked like:
> >
> https://web.archive.org/web/20141004055709/https://weather.torproject.org/subscribe/
> >
> >
> > **Motivation**
> >
> > If a relay disappears today, it is unlikely that anyone will notice or
> even send an email to the operator unless it is a big one.
> >
> > Relay operators and the entire tor network would benefit from a Tor
> Weather service because it notifies relay operators when the state of their
> relays changed (and more). This will increase the likelihood that relay
> operators notice problems and actually mitigate the problem otherwise there
> is no "user feedback" since tor can cope with disappearing relays quite
> well.
> > It also
> > * shows the relay operator that someone actually cares if their relays
> go down or become outdated or have another problem
> > * gives the operator relay best-practices information.
> >
> > **Expected Effects**
> >
> > If enough operators subscribe to such a service:
> > * relays might become more long lived / the churn rate might decrease
> > * the fraction of relays running outdated tor versions might decrease
> > * the fraction of exits with broken DNS might decrease
> >
> > It also has the benefit of being able to contact relay operators
> > * completely automatically
> > * even if they choose to not set a public ContactInfo string in their
> torrc files.
> >
> > **ideas for selectable notification types**
> > (sorted by importance)
> >
> > Support subscribing via single relay FP or MyFamily groups (should not
> need any subscription change if a relay gets added to the family).
> >
> > [ ] Email me when my node is down
> > How long before we send a notification? ________
> > [ ] email me when my relay is affected by a security vulnerability
> > [ ] email me when my relay runs an end-of-life version of tor
> >
> > [ ] email me when my relay runs an outdated tor version (note: this
> should depend on the related onionoo bugs to avoid emailing alpha relay
> people)
> >
> > [ ] email me when my exit relay fails to resolve hostnames (DNS failure)
> >
> > [ ] email me when my relay looses the [ ] stable, [ ] guard, [ ] exit
> flag
> >
> > [ ] email me when my MyFamily configuration is broken (meaning:
> non-mutual config detected or relay with same contactInfo but no MyFamily)
> > [ ] email me when you detect issues with my relay
> > [ ] email me with suggestions for configuration improvements for my
> relay (only once per improvement)
> >
> > [ ] email me when my relay is on the top [ ] 20 [ ] 50 [ ] 100 relays
> list
> >
> > [ ] email me with monthly/quarterly status information that includes
> information like what my position in the overall relay list is (sorted by
> CW), how much traffic my relay did during the last month and what fraction
> of the months time your relay was included in consensus as running (this
> shows information on how many % of the months' consensuses this relay has
> been included and running)
> > [ ] aggregate emails for all my relays into a single digest email
> > [ ] email me about new relay requirements
> > [ ] email me about tor relay operator events
> >
> > * Write a specification describing the meaning of each checkbox
> >
> > **Security and Privacy Implications**
> >
> > The service stores email addresses of potential tor relay operators,
> they should be kept private and safeguarded, but a passive observer can
> collect them by watching outbound email traffic if no TLS is used. Suggest
> to use a dedicated email address for this service.
> >
> > **Additional Ideas**
> >
> > * easy: integration into tor: show the URL pointing to the new Tor
> Weather service like the current link to the lifecycle blogpost when tor
> starts and detects to be a new relay
> > * Provide an uptimerobot-style status page for relay operators using
> onionoo data
> >
> >
> >
> > --
> > https://mastodon.social/@nusenu
> > twitter: @nusenu_
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > tor-relays mailing list
> > tor-relays at lists.torproject.org
> > https://lists.torproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tor-relays
>
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-- 
Matthew Glennon
matthew at glennon.online
PGP Signing Available Upon Request
https://keybase.io/crazysane
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