[tor-relays] DirectoryAuthority & FallbackDir Only at Startup?

[Gary C. New]

David Goulet or Georg Koppen:
Can either of you confirm my question regarding whether the DirectoryAuthority & FallbackDir directives only evaluated at startup of a Tor instance?
I need to verify the best way to configure cloned, loadbalanced Tor Relay Instances to interface with DirectoryAuthorities.
Presently, I have 5 Asuswrt RT-AC66U_B1 (2 Core CPU + 256MB) WiFi Routers (1 as Nginx Loadbalancer + 4 AiMesh Nodes) schizophrenicly configured as cloned Tor Relay Nodes pushing ~175GB (~10,000 circuits) of Tor traffic, daily, which is working very well for such a small footprint.
With this final piece sorted, I'll be able to contribute a tutorial for loadbalancing Tor Relays, which can be extrapolated to larger, high-availability architectural implementations that appear as a single Tor Node (opposed to having several Tor Nodes that comprise a family).
Your feedback is greatly appreciated.
Respectfully,

Gary—
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    On Monday, October 18, 2021, 2:10:12 AM MDT, Gary C. New via tor-relays <tor-relays at lists.torproject.org> wrote:  
 
 All:
Are the DirectoryAuthority & FallbackDir directives only evaluated at startup of a Tor instance? I recently ran into an issue where my Tor Relay Farm went down, due to the manually configured DirectoryAuthority going down and the FallbackDir didn't seem to back it up.

I know that the DirectoryAuthority & FallbackDir directives were intended to be used in a private Tor network, but as I'm running a Tor Relay Farm where all Tor Relay Nodes use a cloned .tordb–I need all the Tor Relay Nodes to talk to the same DirectoryAuthority & FallbackDir.
Other than the DirectoryAuthority going down and a Medium-Term key update, loadbalancing to a Tor Relay Farm has been working very well for a month or so. Although, the fundamental Tor Relay client-based push reporting vs DirectoryAuthority server-based pull reporting doesn't lend itself well to accurately reporting Tor Metrics for a Tor Relay Farm. The DirectoryAuthority observers the Tor Farm based on the individual Tor Relay Node that last reported, so Tor Metrics are only shown for a single Tor Relay Node; while, in reality the Tor Relay Farm is doing x4 - x5 the reported load. Knowing this, you might reconsider the way metrics are reported in the future to accurately report loadbalanced Tor Relays.
As always, thank you for all the work you do.
Respectfully,

Gary—
This Message Originated by the Sun.
iBigBlue 63W Solar Array (~12 Hour Charge)
+ 2 x Charmast 26800mAh Power Banks
= iPhone XS Max 512GB (~2 Weeks Charged)
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