TOR Directory file

[Nick Mathewson]

On Mon, Sep 04, 2006 at 12:19:27AM -0700, Joe Clark wrote:
> Hi,
>    
>   I don't want to be rude, but please answer my little question.
>   
> 
> Joe Clark <joe_clark28 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>     Dear TOR users:
>    
>   I got a pretty newbie question to you guys:
>   From where does TOR client take its routers' database ?

The directory protocol is described at
    http://tor.eff.org/svn/trunk/doc/dir-spec.txt

>   In v-0.1.0.17 it was a file called "cached-directory". I upgraded
>   to v-0.1.1.23 and I noticed some changes in the filename
>   ("cached-routers" ?!) and in the file format.

Indeed you did.  The old protocol is at
    http://tor.eff.org/svn/trunk/doc/dir-spec-v0.txt

The storage format is undocumented, and intentionally so: we may
change it without warning, so please don't rely on it.  But basically,
the old format was just to store a raw directory to disk.  The new
format is to store a network status document for each authority in a
file named cached-status/<authority-fingerprint> (with the authority's
fingerprint given in hex); and to store the router descriptors
concatenated in cached-routers and cached-routers.new.  The latter is
append-only, and used as a journal; periodically, we prune out unused
router descriptors and regenerate cached-routers.

The source (in routerlist.c) should have full information.

yrs,
-- 
Nick Mathewson
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 652 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-talk/attachments/20060904/31598d81/attachment.pgp>