[tor-talk] [tor-consensus-health] Consensus issues

[isis]

Sebastian Hahn transcribed 3.9K bytes:
> Hi Sebastian,
> 
> thanks for looking after the network!
> 
> On 16 Aug 2014, at 22:56, Sebastian G. <bastik.tor> wrote:
> > On Sat, 16 Aug 2014 19:46:15 +0000 (UTC) the doctor said:
> >> NOTICE: Consensus belonging to maatuska was missing the following authority signatures: tor26
> >> NOTICE: Consensus belonging to tor26 was missing the following authority signatures: tor26
> >> NOTICE: Consensus belonging to urras was missing the following authority signatures: tor26
> >> NOTICE: Consensus belonging to dizum was missing the following authority signatures: tor26
> >> NOTICE: Consensus belonging to gabelmoo was missing the following authority signatures: tor26
> >> NOTICE: Consensus belonging to moria1 was missing the following authority signatures: tor26
> >> NOTICE: Consensus belonging to dannenberg was missing the following authority signatures: tor26
> >> NOTICE: Consensus belonging to Faravahar was missing the following authority signatures: tor26
> > 
> > If I understand this messages correctly tor26 didn't sign the consensus
> > of any other authority. (Correct me if I'm wrong.)
> > 
> > How is it possible that tor26 doesn't sign its own consensus?
> 
> Here's an easy theory on what might have happened: When it was time to
> vote, tor26 made a vote, and distributed it to the other dirauths. When
> it was done doing so, it went offline. The other dirauths made a
> consensus, and signed it. tor26 came back online, learned that there was
> a consensus it didn't know about, fetched it from the other dirauths,
> but didn't sign it - because the time to sign it was in the past. This
> does not constitute an error condition for tor26, because enough other
> dirauths signed it for it to be considered valid.
> 
> I'd argue against increasing the complexity of the voting process to
> handle this rare edge case. I do think maybe the wording is confusing:
> What does "Consensus belonging to" mean? A consensus doesn't belong to
> any individual dirauth. I don't have a quick suggestion for what to
> name the notice instead, tho.
> 

s/Consensus belonging to/Consensus as reported by/


Only somewhat tangential, I still believe we shouldn't be mincing terms: a
consensus is full agreement without any blockers, whereas what Tor uses is
merely a democratic vote. Consensus-based decision making and democracy are
such different beasts that I might fight for the prior, yet would nearly
always denounce the latter as majoritarianist fascism-in-disguise.


> > A similar message was send on the 15th for gabelmoo, but gabelmoo had no
> > notice line. There were two warning, first gabelmoo did not publish a
> > fresh consensus and secondly it did not report bandwidth scanner
> > results. Nothing I would have worried about. Nor would I have found strange.
> 
> Yes, gabelmoo was down as I was fixing its bw auth. Nothing to worry
> about indeed.
> 
> > However an authority handing out a consensus it didn't sign might be
> > something that isn't quite right.
> 
> I think it's OK, considering the above.
> 

Sebastian (err, the "bastik" one :) ), you might consider joining the
#tor-bots channel on OFTC, it'll give you updates on the myriad ways that the
DirAuths are constantly being painful for their poor maintainers. :)

-- 
 ♥Ⓐ isis agora lovecruft
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