Re: [tor-relays] Authorities: what is up?
Because alpha tends to be pretty stable with tor, and the latest security fixes are in alpha a lot sooner. Sent from my iPhone On Jan 13, 2012, at 12:21 PM, Steve Snyder swsny...@snydernet.net wrote: On 01/13/2012 05:27 AM, Sebastian Hahn wrote: Ah, I see. ides not having a current consensus is different from ides being down. Ides still is running the stable Tor version and needs to be upgraded to 0.2.3.x to be allowed to vote along with the other dirauths, so it doesn't immediately know about the new consensus. I don't know when ides will be upgraded, but I hope the answer is soon. Why do the authorities run an Alpha version of Tor instead of the (presumably less buggy) latest Stable version? ___ tor-relays mailing list tor-relays@lists.torproject.org https://lists.torproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tor-relays ___ tor-relays mailing list tor-relays@lists.torproject.org https://lists.torproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tor-relays
Re: [tor-relays] Authorities: what is up?
On Jan 13, 2012, at 1:40 PM, Andrew Lewis wrote: Because alpha tends to be pretty stable with tor, and the latest security fixes are in alpha a lot sooner. On Jan 13, 2012, at 12:21 PM, Steve Snyder swsny...@snydernet.net wrote: On 01/13/2012 05:27 AM, Sebastian Hahn wrote: Ah, I see. ides not having a current consensus is different from ides being down. Ides still is running the stable Tor version and needs to be upgraded to 0.2.3.x to be allowed to vote along with the other dirauths, so it doesn't immediately know about the new consensus. I don't know when ides will be upgraded, but I hope the answer is soon. Why do the authorities run an Alpha version of Tor instead of the (presumably less buggy) latest Stable version? I wouldn't quite agree with Andrew's statement here. We do make sure to backport security fixes and release stable versions whenever there's an issue so that the users of our stable series aren't at risk. There's a different reason why the directory authorities run alpha versions of Tor. At some point, new features don't get into stable anymore (that's why it's called stable), so the risk of introducing new bugs accidentally is smaller and also so that users of the stable series don't have to upgrade as often (this is what stable refers to, hopefully not needing to upgrade very often). This means that new features that enhance the safety of the Tor network as a whole often don't get into the current stable version so that development effort can focus on stabilizing the current alpha version. This time, a new consensus method has been implemented, and I chose not to base that feature on the stable branch for the above-mentioned reasons. This consensus method means that more dirauths need to be malicious to set a certain network parameter in the consensus. The only relays who need that change are the dirauths, and the whole network automatically benefits. Hope that made it clearer, if not, ask away. ___ tor-relays mailing list tor-relays@lists.torproject.org https://lists.torproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tor-relays
Re: [tor-relays] Authorities: what is up?
On Jan 13, 2012, at 1:27 PM, Nils Vogels wrote: Hey Sebastian, Roger, On 13/01/2012, Sebastian Hahn m...@sebastianhahn.net wrote: Ah, I see. ides not having a current consensus is different from ides being down. Ides still is running the stable Tor version and needs to be upgraded to 0.2.3.x to be allowed to vote along with the other dirauths, so it doesn't immediately know about the new consensus. I don't know when ides will be upgraded, but I hope the answer is soon. Let me know if there is a need for stable authorities with speedy admins. I'm sure the Dutch hacker community (which I am very much involved with) can lend a hand and/or a high-bw host. Hi Nils, I'm pasting some stuff here from the consensus update request thread, also on tor-relays: On Jan 8, 2012, at 5:45 PM, Roger Dingledine wrote: On Sun, Jan 08, 2012 at 03:35:16PM +0100, Sebastian Hahn wrote: The problem is that in the current situation, it gets worse with more authorities, not better. Our voting mechanism needs an overhaul :/ Indeed. The other problem is that we simply have too many clients out there. And we've taught them all to be eager to keep updated, so they're harder to partition. But it's really a volume thing at this point. We need a more scalable way of keeping clients informed about network topology. In our copious free time, while also doing everything else that needs doing. :/ Anyway, crisis averted, this time. --Roger Hope that helps make it clearer why adding a new authority in the short term doesn't actually help us currently. Thanks Sebastian ___ tor-relays mailing list tor-relays@lists.torproject.org https://lists.torproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tor-relays
Re: [tor-relays] Authorities: what is up?
Sebastian Hahn m...@sebastianhahn.net wrote on 13.01.2012: Ah, I see. ides not having a current consensus is different from ides being down. Ides still is running the stable Tor version and needs to be upgraded to 0.2.3.x to be allowed to vote along with the other dirauths, so it doesn't immediately know about the new consensus. I don't know when ides will be upgraded, but I hope the answer is soon. ___ tor-relays mailing list tor-relays@lists.torproject.org https://lists.torproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tor-relays But warnings like 13:28:48 [WARN] Received http status code 404 (Not found) from server '216.224.124.114:9030' while fetching consensus directory. are pretty new. I did not notice them the last several months. Therefore I think something happened. Regards, Klaus signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part. ___ tor-relays mailing list tor-relays@lists.torproject.org https://lists.torproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tor-relays
Re: [tor-relays] Authorities: what is up?
On Jan 13, 2012, at 2:57 PM, Klaus Layer wrote: Sebastian Hahn m...@sebastianhahn.net wrote on 13.01.2012: Ah, I see. ides not having a current consensus is different from ides being down. Ides still is running the stable Tor version and needs to be upgraded to 0.2.3.x to be allowed to vote along with the other dirauths, so it doesn't immediately know about the new consensus. I don't know when ides will be upgraded, but I hope the answer is soon. But warnings like 13:28:48 [WARN] Received http status code 404 (Not found) from server '216.224.124.114:9030' while fetching consensus directory. are pretty new. I did not notice them the last several months. Therefore I think something happened. Regards, Klaus Yes, until a few days ago ides was - when it was online - voting along with the other dirauths. Now that the other dirauths upgraded, ides is left out and the warning happens. We might want to silence the warning, as we don't warn when a dirauth is totally offline, and the user can't actually do anything to fix this. ___ tor-relays mailing list tor-relays@lists.torproject.org https://lists.torproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tor-relays
Re: [tor-relays] Authorities: what is up?
Sebastian Hahn m...@sebastianhahn.net wrote on 13.01.2012: Yes, until a few days ago ides was - when it was online - voting along with the other dirauths. Now that the other dirauths upgraded, ides is left out and the warning happens. We might want to silence the warning, as we don't warn when a dirauth is totally offline, and the user can't actually do anything to fix this. Thanks, got it. signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part. ___ tor-relays mailing list tor-relays@lists.torproject.org https://lists.torproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tor-relays
