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Re: SIGHUP without effect (was: 0.2.1.2-alpha failing to upload descriptor updates automatically)



On Thu, Jul 24, 2008 at 06:53:36AM -0500, Scott Bennett wrote:
>      I'm running 0.2.1.2-alpha and have noticed a recurring problem.  It
> appears that tor is sometimes not uploading a new descriptor on schedule.
> Once this happens, it appears that it will *never* upload a descriptor
> update on its own, though it can be tricked into doing so by making some
> significant change in torrc, then giving it a SIGHUP.  I've been trying
> to keep an eye on it and forcing it to update when the authorities stop
> listing it in the consensus documents by commenting/uncommenting an
> ExitPolicy line and giving it SIGHUP.

Very simular, on 0.2.0.28-rc (r15188) sending a SIGHUP did not do what 
it is supposed to. 

Trying to publish new descriptors (bandwidth) lead to quite unexpected
results. The authorities (cached-consensus) simply stopped listing the 
node and cached-descriptors(.new) were not updated any more.
This though did not have an immediate effect as there were enough machines 
using the node because of the previously downloaded descriptors and 
consensus.  It simply died away slowly when more and more machines 'forgot'
the node to exist. 
Some 12 hours later Tor had to be restartet when it was finally running
on some 30% of its previous capacity, but then uploading the new  
descriptors then accepted (or recognized) correctly by the authorities.

The second SIGHUP for to publish altered descriptors didn't do anything 
a few days later. 
The reason again was to increase bandwidth and to become a HSDir-Server.
There might be things to be considered to set this flag I do not yet know,
and if there are, let me know, please.
The SIGHUP though did nothing at all.

#/bin/kill -HUP 12345 && tail -f ../debug.log (info) 

showed the signal being recieved and new descriptors uploaded to I believe 
5 authorative servers, but only 4 responding. Some time later still no
change could be seen, so a new and very unpatient SIGHUP did not have any
result. I remember seeing this message:

...Consensus does not include configured authority 'dannenberg' at .....

but no change to the servers descriptors had been acknowledged.
 
The altered descriptors were then correctly uploaded or recognized with the
next schedule 18 hours after the previous one.

I suppose Tor's behaviour to ignore SIGHUP uploads with an unmodified 
torrc may be rather a feature, but I'm not sure about this if Tor ignores 
signals which  are sent for good reason.  

This on a FreeBSD amd64 box, Scott runs FreeBSD i386, does this also happen 
with linux's ?

Bug or feature ? Happy ignoring ?

Regards 
Hans

P.S.: The moment I write this the box crashes hard. The reason for all
      this  reconfiguring was to find the limit of this tiny server.
      Think I found it :)