[tor-relays] GeoIP file

[Roger Dingledine]

On Sun, May 07, 2017 at 08:20:39PM -0700, Ian Zimmerman wrote:
> How does the tor daemon read the GeoIP database file?  Does it read the
> whole file once when starting up, or every time it needs to resolve an
> IP, or something in between (say, it builds an index in memory on
> startup and then seeks to locations in the file when looking up)?

It reads it once on startup, and keeps it in memory after that.

> I am asking because I want to know if I need to restart, SIGHUP or in
> some other way kick the daemon after I install a new GeoIP file into
> place.

It looks like you need to restart -- a hup won't do it.

I just filed https://bugs.torproject.org/22203 for maybe making a hup
do what you wanted, but it turns out to be complicated, so don't hold
your breath. :)

What are you doing, that needs changes to the geoip file of a running
Tor daemon?

--Roger