#23605: BOOTSTRAP PROGRESS=80 is a lie -------------------------+------------------------------------------------- Reporter: | Owner: (none) catalyst | Type: defect | Status: new Priority: High | Milestone: Tor: 0.3.3.x-final Component: Core | Version: Tor/Tor | Keywords: bootstrap clock-skew tor-guard Severity: Normal | usability ux Actual Points: | Parent ID: #22266 Points: | Reviewer: Sponsor: | -------------------------+------------------------------------------------- Tor can report `BOOTSTRAP_STATUS_CONN_OR` (PROGRESS=80, "Connecting to the Tor network") when it actually can do no such thing. In some situations (e.g., clock skew) this causes progress to get stuck at 80% indefinitely, resulting in very poor user experience.
Right now `update_router_have_minimum_dir_info()` reports the `BOOTSTRAP_STATUS_CONN_OR` event if there's a "reasonably live" consensus and enough descriptors downloaded. A client with a clock skewed several hours into the future can get stalled here indefinitely due to inability to select a guard: if the client's clock is skewed, it will never have a live consensus. (Guard selection seems to require a non-expired consensus, rather than a reasonably live consensus at least during bootstrap.) We should either relax the guard selection consensus liveness requirement, or avoid reporting `BOOTSTRAP_STATUS_CONN_OR` when we have no reasonable chance of actually connecting to a guard for building application circuits. Arguably we shouldn't start downloading descriptors until we have a non- expired consensus either, because that gets represented as a considerable chunk of the progress bar (40%->80%) in a way that could be misleading to a user. Making that change without additional work would cause bootstrap to get stuck at 40% instead of 80%, which might be an improvement. This can already happen if the client's clock is skewed several hours in the past. -- Ticket URL: <https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/23605> Tor Bug Tracker & Wiki <https://trac.torproject.org/> The Tor Project: anonymity online
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