[tor-dev] Using Tor w/o GeoIP

[Sebastian Hahn]

On Jan 20, 2012, at 1:48 AM, Nathan Freitas wrote:

> Is it the geoip database only required if you are specifying
> Exit/Entrances nodes by country code?
> 
> I am thinking about not fully unpacking it into Android storage, unless
> the user activates those option in Orbot. This will save quite a bit of
> internal storage space.
> 
> Thanks!
> 
> +n8fr8

As a client, the geoipdb is only required for specification of nodes by
country code, yes. On relays/bridges, we also use it for statistics. One
idea for you might be to not include the geoip thing by default at all,
and only when the user requests a feature that requires it do you inform
them that they need to fetch another file. I'm not clear if that's legal
on Android, but if it is, it could be an effective mechanism.

Also we've had plans to make the geoip db a thing the tor client
downloads on demand only, but haven't gotten far with that. If you
wanted to help with that on an 0.2.4 timeframe, that'd probably be
fantastic.