peculiar 0.2.0.9-alpha behavior this a.m.

[Scott Bennett]

     On Wed, 31 Oct 2007 23:30:05 -0400 Nick Mathewson <nickm at freehaven.net>
wrote:
>On Wed, Oct 31, 2007 at 12:24:11PM -0500, Scott Bennett wrote:
>>      [WARNING:  I've included a *lot* of log entries in this note, inters=
>persed
>> with my observations and comments, so it is quite long and finding my rem=
>arks
>> will require careful scanning.]
>>      Among the various windows I keep open in X, I usually have one open =
>for
>> /var/log/messages and another for /var/log/tor/notices.log (using "tail -=
>f"
>> to display them).  Early this a.m. I was startled to see suddenly appear =
>the
>> following after /var/log/tor/notices.log had been silent for about twelve
>> hours:
>>=20
>> Oct 31 02:51:21.091 [notice] Our directory information is no longer up-to=
>-date enough to build circuits.
>> Oct 31 03:03:40.827 [notice] I learned some more directory information, b=
>ut not enough to build a circuit.
> [...]
>
>>      And all has been well since the restart.
>>      I am mystified as to what went wrong that tor found itself unable to=
> build
>> circuits, even though I could see that it was adding new data to
>> cached-descriptors.new quite frequently.  Did anything strange happen to =
>the
>> directory authorities early this a.m. that might have induced this behavi=
>or?
>>=20
>
>Hi, Scott!   I'd suspect a bug in 0.2.0.9 alpha; I'm not aware of any
>authority bug.
>
>Unfortunately, the log messages still leave me clueless as to what's
>going on.  If this happens again, can you:
>
>   A) Make a copy of cached-descriptors* and cached-consensus, so
>      that the state can be reproduced to try to investigate what's up.

     Sure.
>
>   B) If possible, log at info for a while: it says a lot more about
>      what's happening with downloads.

     Okay.  However, unless the problem recurs while that is going on,
I'm not sure what help it will be.  Keep in mind that it has only happened
on my system once so far with *any* version of tor that I've run, so it's
quite possible that it may never happen again.
>
>I'm going to try to make those "Not enough info" messages more useful
>in the next alpha; sorry I can't figure this out just now.
>
     How about also logging whatever made tor decide that the information
was out of date in the first place?  The first sign of the problem was the
log message:

Oct 31 02:51:21.091 [notice] Our directory information is no longer up-to-date enough to build circuits.

That doesn't tell me what the triggering event was.  Had it just downloaded
a network status document that caused it to believe that the information was
too old?  What timestamp did it use from whatever source to determine that
the information was out of date?
     Thanks much!


                                  Scott Bennett, Comm. ASMELG, CFIAG
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