[tor-bugs] #5232 [BridgeDB]: Import bridges into BridgeDB in a separate thread and database transaction

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#5232: Import bridges into BridgeDB in a separate thread and database transaction
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 Reporter:  karsten   |          Owner:  aagbsn
     Type:  defect    |         Status:  new   
 Priority:  major     |      Milestone:        
Component:  BridgeDB  |        Version:        
 Keywords:            |         Parent:  #4499 
   Points:            |   Actualpoints:        
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 Last week, kaner briefly mentioned that BridgeDB doesn't accept client
 connections during startup.  I then asked aagbsn whether he can look at
 the relevant code parts to see if this also applies to reloading bridges,
 which happens twice an hour.  He said it does.

 To be clear: if BridgeDB takes 1 minute to load bridges (20K bridges on
 aagbsn's linode VM, 8K bridges on my desktop machine), it won't give out
 any bridges to clients for 2 minutes per hour.  That's a maximum
 availability of 96.6 %.  This is going to get worse the more bridges we
 add.

 aagbsn and I think that we could make BridgeDB import bridges in a
 separate thread and in a single database transaction.  There should
 probably be a check that it doesn't serve too old bridges (e.g., not more
 than a few hours old) during startup if it hasn't run for a while.

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Ticket URL: <https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/5232>
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