Re: [tor-bugs] #22203 [Core Tor/Tor]: Should a hup reload the geoip files?

["Tor Bug Tracker & Wiki" <blackhole@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

#22203: Should a hup reload the geoip files?
--------------------------+---------------------
 Reporter:  arma          |          Owner:
     Type:  enhancement   |         Status:  new
 Priority:  Medium        |      Milestone:
Component:  Core Tor/Tor  |        Version:
 Severity:  Normal        |     Resolution:
 Keywords:                |  Actual Points:
Parent ID:                |         Points:
 Reviewer:                |        Sponsor:
--------------------------+---------------------
Changes (by karsten):

 * cc: karsten (added)


Comment:

 I'm not arguing against fixing bugs or writing better tests.

 But what's the practical value of being able to reload the geoip files?
 We only ship new geoip files in new releases, and people will need to
 restart their tor process in order to upgrade to those anyway.  I'd guess
 that only a tiny fraction of operators would want to put in newer geoip
 files manually and reload their tor process.  And those statistics are
 hardly statistically relevant.

 So, I was curious how old the geoip files used by relays and bridges are,
 which is very likely related to how old the tor versions running in the
 network are.  Relays and bridges contain `geoip-db-digest` lines with
 SHA-1 digests of their geoip file, and we can extract those digests from
 tor's Git repo.  Here are some statistics on the age of geoip files
 mentioned in descriptors published between January 1, 2017 and May 4,
 2017:

 {{{
 # Relays
         Min.      1st Qu.       Median         Mean      3rd Qu.
 Max.
 "2009-06-03" "2015-03-03" "2015-12-01" "2016-02-15" "2017-01-04"
 "2017-04-04"

 # Bridges
         Min.      1st Qu.       Median         Mean      3rd Qu.
 Max.
 "2009-06-03" "2016-11-03" "2016-12-07" "2016-11-04" "2017-02-08"
 "2017-04-04"
 }}}

 These statistics say that the geoip files used by relays are more than 1
 year old on average and those used by bridges a couple of months.  (No
 idea why the difference between the two is so big.)

 But anyway, it seems like improving support for manually reloading geoip
 files won't make much of a difference.

 What we should consider instead is support for downloading signed geoip
 files from the directory authorities.  That will be much more effective.
 But it's also a lot of work and requires looking into licenses.

--
Ticket URL: <https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/22203#comment:2>
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