[tor-relays] Decline in relays

Mon Oct 23 20:58:39 UTC 2017

On 23 Oct (22:49:55), rasptor 4273 wrote:
> My relay has gone off the consensus.
> Fingerprint: E7FFF8C3D5736AB87215C5DB05620103033E69C3

Interesting. And it is still running as of now without any problems? Can you
give me the IP/ORPORT tuple?

You think you can add this to your torrc and then HUP your relay (very
importatnt to NOT restart it).

    Log info file <FULL_PATH_TO_LOG_FILE>

And then after a some hours (maybe a day), we'll be looking for "Decided to
publish new relay descriptor".

If it appears, we know that your relay keeps uploading to the directory
authorities so thus chances are that there is a problem on the dirauth side
not finding you reachable.

Thanks!
David

> Alias: rasptor4273
> Am running Tor 0.2.5.14 on Debian, Raspberry Pi 2B. I upgraded to that
> version on September 3rd.
> 
> I grepped through these:
> https://collector.torproject.org/archive/relay-descriptors/consensuses/ and
> the latest entry I found for my alias is in the file
> ./17/2017-09-17-13-00-00-consensus.
> 
> Not sure what other information I can provide. Do let me know if I can do
> anything else to help troubleshoot.
> 
> Best,
> Joep
> 
> On Mon, Oct 23, 2017 at 9:14 PM, George <george at queair.net> wrote:
> 
> > David Goulet:
> > > Hello everyone!
> > >
> > > Since July 2017, there has been a steady decline in relays from ~7k to
> > now
> > > ~6.5k. This is a bit unusual that is we don't see often such a steady
> > behavior
> > > of relays going offline (at least that I can remember...).
> > >
> > > It could certainly be something normal here. However, we shouldn't rule
> > out a
> > > bug in tor as well. The steadyness of the decline makes me a bit more
> > worried
> > > than usual.
> > >
> > > You can see the decline has started around July 2017:
> > >
> > > https://metrics.torproject.org/networksize.html?start=
> > 2017-06-01&end=2017-10-23
> > >
> > > What happened around July in terms of tor release:
> > >
> > > 2017-06-08 09:35:17 -0400 802d30d9b7  (tag: tor-0.3.0.8)
> > > 2017-06-08 09:47:44 -0400 e14006a545  (tag: tor-0.2.5.14)
> > > 2017-06-08 09:47:58 -0400 aa89500225  (tag: tor-0.2.9.11)
> > > 2017-06-08 09:55:28 -0400 f833164576  (tag: tor-0.2.4.29)
> > > 2017-06-08 09:55:58 -0400 21a9e5371d  (tag: tor-0.2.6.12)
> > > 2017-06-08 09:56:15 -0400 3db01d3b56  (tag: tor-0.2.7.8)
> > > 2017-06-08 09:58:36 -0400 64ac28ef5d  (tag: tor-0.2.8.14)
> > > 2017-06-08 10:15:41 -0400 dc47d936d4  (tag: tor-0.3.1.3-alpha)
> > > ...
> > > 2017-06-29 16:56:13 -0400 fab91a290d  (tag: tor-0.3.1.4-alpha)
> > > 2017-06-29 17:03:23 -0400 22b3bf094e  (tag: tor-0.3.0.9)
> > > ...
> > > 2017-08-01 11:33:36 -0400 83389502ee  (tag: tor-0.3.1.5-alpha)
> > > 2017-08-02 11:50:57 -0400 c33db290a9  (tag: tor-0.3.0.10)
> > >
> > > Note that on August 1st 2017, 0.2.4, 0.2.6 and 0.2.7 went end of life.
> > >
> > > That being said, I don't have an easy way to list which relays went
> > offline
> > > during the decline (since July basically) to see if a common pattern
> > emerges.
> > >
> > > So few things. First, if anyone on this list noticed that their relay
> > went off
> > > the consensus while still having tor running, it is a good time to
> > inform this
> > > thread :).
> > >
> > > Second, anyone could have an idea of what possibly is going on that is
> > have
> > > one or more theories. Even better, if you have some tooling to try to
> > list
> > > which relays went offline, that would be _awesome_.
> > >
> > > Third, knowing what was the state of packaging in
> > Debian/Redhat/Ubuntu/...
> > > around July could be useful. What if a package in distro X is broken and
> > the
> > > update have been killing the relays? Or something like that...
> > >
> > > Last, looking at the dirauth would be a good idea. Basically, when did
> > the
> > > majority switched to 030 and then 031. Starting in July, what was the
> > state of
> > > the dirauth version?
> > >
> > > Any help is very welcome! Again, this decline could be from natural
> > cause but
> > > for now I just don't want to rule out an issue in tor or packaging.
> >
> > (Replying to OP since it went OT)
> >
> > As some of you know, TDP did a little suite of shell scripts based on
> > OONI data to look at diversity statistics:
> >
> > https://torbsd.github.io/oostats.html
> >
> > With the source here for further tinkering:
> >
> > https://github.com/torbsd/tdp-onion-stats/
> >
> > Maybe something we could look at is "exception reports", which in some
> > industries means regular reports that look at anomalies or "exceptions"
> > which display out-of-the-ordinary statistics, generally prompting some
> > sort of action.
> >
> > In other words, daily reports would be run on, say, bw consensus by
> > country, and if there was some statistically significant change over N
> > periods of time, it would be noted. Or if a particular OS drops or
> > jumps. Or if a particular AS jumps or declines for relays, bridges,
> > whatever.
> >
> > If done right, a bunch of these reports could point to particular
> > changes to the network that need further investigation, and in some
> > cases, might quickly point to the related issue.  Eg, countryX shutdown
> > ISP with a particular AS number, etc.
> >
> > The more reports coupled with careful optimization over time could
> > become an alarm system for Tor network changes, instead of just "er,
> > such-and-such distro didnt update their packages then, I just found out
> > in git."
> >
> > Thoughts?
> >
> > g
> >
> >
> > --
> >
> >
> > 34A6 0A1F F8EF B465 866F F0C5 5D92 1FD1 ECF6 1682
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
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> > tor-relays at lists.torproject.org
> > https://lists.torproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tor-relays
> >
> >

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