[tor-dev] Using the consensus-health web page to debug the Tor network

[Damian Johnson]

> I think Roger uses it in his role as network debugger, not as authority
> operator.  There may be more people wanting to help with network
> debugging who are not authority operators.  And there may be expert
> relay operators who are wondering why their relay isn't listed or isn't
> listed with a given flag.

I would be really surprised if relay operators, even expert ones, find
the table useful. That said, on irc Roger mentioned that he finds the
table handy for finding trends he previously didn't know to look for.
I suspect he's the only person using it for that, but it's both a
reasonable use case and one that's frustratingly tricky to provide a
good solution for that's also useful to others...

> A command-line tool doesn't sound too crazy.  That tool (or suite of
> scripts) should be able to cache downloads and votes and share them
> among all queries we might want to ask it.

Agreed, this is a capability I'd *love* to have...

https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/9351

One bit I'm not sure how to address is cache invalidation. We can
check when a descriptor has expired, but not when it is no longer the
freshest.

>  $ ./doctor --download
>  $ ./doctor --flag moria1:Running --flag maatuska:Running --noflag
> consensus:Running --count

I think you're misunderstanding my suggestion. My proposal is to
*teach* Roger to write or adapt scripts to solve his questions. This
would both empower him to answer more interesting questions than he
presently can and, in the long run, save him time. I would be more
than happy to write the first dozen, which he could then use to both
learn stem and adapt to answer similar questions.

I'm not proposing a new tool. Rather, I'm suggesting that I teach a
man to fish. ;)

Cheers! -Damian