[tor-bugs] #33067 [Metrics/Consensus Health]: DocTor should also fetch microdesc consensus, plus maybe downplay the vanilla consensus warnings

Tor Bug Tracker & Wiki blackhole at torproject.org
Mon Jan 27 10:11:57 UTC 2020


#33067: DocTor should also fetch microdesc consensus, plus maybe downplay the
vanilla consensus warnings
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     Reporter:  arma                      |      Owner:  tom
         Type:  defect                    |     Status:  new
     Priority:  Medium                    |  Milestone:
    Component:  Metrics/Consensus Health  |    Version:
     Severity:  Normal                    |   Keywords:
Actual Points:                            |  Parent ID:
       Points:                            |   Reviewer:
      Sponsor:                            |
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 Currently the consensus health (DocTor) scripts try to fetch the vanilla
 consensus from the dirport of each directory authority.

 That's useful to look at, because relays try to fetch it too.

 But it is at least as useful, and arguably more useful, to fetch the
 microdesc-flavored consensus and make sure that one is working too.

 I mention this idea now because with the #33018 and #33029 fixes,
 directory authorities might end up giving priority to answering microdesc
 consensus requests over vanilla consensus requests when we are bandwidth
 constrained and we need to choose.

 (I don't want to add a special case to the Tor code to never send a 503 to
 the consensus health checker IP address, because that would just mask any
 actual problems that the rest of the network would experience.)

 (We might later decide that it's no longer wise to send an email warning
 when consensus-health's vanilla consensus request gets a 503 response.
 Those emails will be unactionable and just make people stop reading emails
 from consensus-health. But we can tackle that one once we resolve #33029.)

--
Ticket URL: <https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/33067>
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