[tor-dev] shipping with fallbackdir sources

[Jacob Appelbaum]

Hi Peter,

On 4/17/15, Peter Palfrader <weasel at torproject.org> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> so, Tor has included a feature to fetch the initial consensus from nodes
> other than the authorities for a while now.  We just haven't shipped a
> list of alternate locations for clients to go to yet.
>
> Reasons why we might want to ship tor with a list of additional places
> where clients can find the consensus is that it makes authority
> reachability and BW less important.
>
> At the last Tor dev meeting we came up with a list of arbitrary
> requirements that nodes should meet to be included in this list.
>
> We want them to have been around and using their current key, address,
> and port for a while now (120 days), and have been running, a guard, and
> a v2 directory mirror for most of that time.

Is there a way to make the Tor Dir Auths produce that file as a
verifiable consensus every hour? Or is there a way to make the client
set that list of constraints and then we can just use a normal
consensus file?

>
> I have written a script to come up with a list of notes that match our
> criteria.  It's currently at
> https://www.palfrader.org/volatile/fallback-dir/get-fallback-dir-candidates
>
> It currently produces
> https://www.palfrader.org/volatile/2015-04-17-VjBkc8DWV8c/list
>

That seems reasonable and I think that it is better than nothing. I
worry that the process is too manual.

All the best,
Jacob