[tor-relays] BridgeDB currently up but non-functional?

[Philipp Winter]

On Fri, Jun 21, 2019 at 05:56:21AM -0700, Rick Huebner wrote:
> Hi, Phillip. Thanks for the response, and for taking on these issues. I also
> sent a more detailed direct report to frontdesk at torproject.org. It
> apparently crossed with your reply to this thread in the mail, I wasn't
> intending to nag. I assume that'll end up forwarded to you as well,
> hopefully the extra detail I was able to include there will be helpful in
> debugging the problems.

Thanks for your help, Rick.  I did see your frontdesk email.

Here's a quick update on the issue:

1. I blacklisted 53 bridges whose obfs4 port was unreachable:
   <https://gitweb.torproject.org/project/bridges/bridgedb-admin.git/commit/?id=5a8fe00304aee3df49ebbcbeb16ae3854bda0556>

   After deploying <https://bugs.torproject.org/28655>, these bridges
   were effectively useless.  Hopefully, this will reduce the odds of
   getting a non-functional obfs4 bridge.

2. I added a log message to BridgeDB that tells us how many bridge
   requests resulted in 0, 1, 2, and 3 bridge lines.  Here are the
   results for a few hours worth of logs:

   # of bridges | # of requests
   -------------+--------------
              0 | 188 (14%)
              1 | 381 (29%)
              2 | 395 (38%)
              3 | 235 (18%)

  (Interestingly, all requests that resulted in 0 bridges were HTTPS
   requests for obfs2, coming from Tor exit relays.  BridgeDB no longer
   supports obfs2, which is why it responds with 0 bridges.)

  Assuming that these numbers are correct, BridgeDB should be returning
  at least one bridge for every request it has seen over the last few
  hours.  That clearly wasn't the case a few days ago but I wonder if
  it's the case now.  Are you still unable to get bridges from BridgeDB?

Cheers,
Philipp