what do you do with no intro points?

[Roger Dingledine]

On Fri, Nov 26, 2004 at 09:15:47PM -0500, Douglas F.Calvert wrote:
> Nov 26 20:58:18.813 [warn] circuit_get_open_circ_or_launch(): Couldn't 
> get an intro point for 'xxxxxxxxxxxxxx'. Closing.

This could mean that the hidden service published zero intro points
(that is, it published no way to get to it -- this might happen if it's
shutting down or if it's failed to establish any so far). More likely,
it means that the hidden service published some intro points and you
have tried them all and every one denied you (that is, rejected your
introduction because the hidden service wasn't attached to that intro
point anymore).

So the bottom line is that the hidden service isn't available.

> The system i want to connect to could be down, i am not sure because i 
> can not connect to it in any manner other than the hidden service. Will 
> tor identify the difference between not being able to find an intro 
> point for a service and the remote tor node being unavailable?

There are two error conditions you might get. One of them is what you
got, meaning at some point in the past day a hidden service descriptor
was published, but the hidden service is down now. The other is
"Failed to fetch service id '%s', and not in cache. Closing conn.",
which indicates that there was no valid service descriptor available.
(They expire from the dirservers after a day.)

>   In the best case scenario should alice handpick  HiddenServiceNodes 

HiddenServiceNodes allows Bob (the hidden service) to request intro
points. It won't do you any good.

> and RendNodes or should they be chosen at random? And if alice should 

RendNodes lets you pick your rendezvous point, but that doesn't matter
because you couldn't find a working intro point.

> pick these nodes how should she do so? If she runs a node or number of 
> nodes should she use these nodes?

I would say it's probably best to leave all these unspecified, and thus
chosen randomly.

--Roger