[tor-dev] getting clock skew on demand rather than by event?

[Patrick Schleizer]

Hi,

whonixcheck is a diagnostic utility that can be run on demand. Not a Tor
controller, that is supposed to be run continuously. It checks things
such as if Tor's pid is running, bootstrap status, DisableNetwork 1, tor
--verify-config and more.

There is one thing in the logs, that would be worth notify a user about it:

[warn] Our clock is 4 hours, 47 minutes behind the time published in the
consensus network status document

[or clock too fast]

Now, parsing the log sounds like an unclean solution.

Tor control protocol can tell about CLOCK_SKEW, but it's "only" an
event. And "event" sounds to me, only a controller that is continuously
running would be capable to learn about it.

Is it possible to use stem for something like:, "Tor, tell me right now
about your latest info on current clock skew"? Similar to
tor_bootstrap_check.py?

Cheers,
Patrick

[1]
https://github.com/Whonix/anon-shared-helper-scripts/blob/master/usr/lib/anon-shared-helper-scripts/tor_bootstrap_check.py