[tor-bugs] #572 [Tor Client]: fallback-consensus file impractical to use

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#572: fallback-consensus file impractical to use
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 Reporter:  arma                                  |           Type:  enhancement
   Status:  new                                   |       Priority:  major      
Milestone:  Tor: 0.2.4.x-final                    |      Component:  Tor Client 
  Version:  0.2.0.9-alpha                         |     Resolution:  None       
 Keywords:  performance bootstrap dos-resistance  |         Parent:  #2664      
   Points:                                        |   Actualpoints:             
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Comment(by mikeperry):

 Quick review of dbac20ffbd608d58d89fe644397bcf8fce2e00c0 for
 nickm/fallback_dirsource:

 1. Is the plan to hardcode these in add_default_fallback_dir_servers(),
 ship a default torrc, or add support for an additional data dir file? I
 assume the first one?
 2. I don't actually see the new "FallbackDir" command in config.c?
 3. How sensitive to downtime are these fallback servers? It appears that
 the bootstrap consensus/descriptor fetching code wasn't changed for them?

 Related to 3: I have not yet investigated what about the code makes it so
 bad that individual dirauths are unreachable for a while (#4483). Might
 this change make it safer to either make the timeouts much lower or
 schedule multiple parallel requests? That way, we can safely add lots and
 lots of possibly unstable dir mirrors to our list, and also tolerate
 dirauth failure through this change. We risk DoSing the directory servers
 with too many requests through bugs this way, but that's what loglines are
 for. For the alpha series, we could add notice-level logs to
 router_pick_dirserver_generic() and/or the actual connection attempt code,
 and maybe even the server side, too.

-- 
Ticket URL: <https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/572#comment:22>
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