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[tor-commits] [metrics-web/master] Adds guidelines for new metrics page
commit 66704ba064c13f6349722edd8d63f93b5d2244ec
Author: Iain R. Learmonth <irl@xxxxxxxx>
Date: Wed Jul 24 14:54:19 2019 +0100
Adds guidelines for new metrics page
Fixes: #29315
---
.../metrics/web/MetricsGuidelinesServlet.java | 25 +++
src/main/resources/web.xml | 11 +
src/main/resources/web/jsps/metrics-guidelines.jsp | 223 +++++++++++++++++++++
src/main/resources/web/jsps/sources.jsp | 6 +
4 files changed, 265 insertions(+)
diff --git a/src/main/java/org/torproject/metrics/web/MetricsGuidelinesServlet.java b/src/main/java/org/torproject/metrics/web/MetricsGuidelinesServlet.java
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..41dae13
--- /dev/null
+++ b/src/main/java/org/torproject/metrics/web/MetricsGuidelinesServlet.java
@@ -0,0 +1,25 @@
+/* Copyright 2018 The Tor Project
+ * See LICENSE for licensing information */
+
+package org.torproject.metrics.web;
+
+import java.io.IOException;
+
+import javax.servlet.ServletException;
+import javax.servlet.http.HttpServletRequest;
+import javax.servlet.http.HttpServletResponse;
+
+public class MetricsGuidelinesServlet extends AnyServlet {
+
+ private static final long serialVersionUID = 6099009779662419291L;
+
+ @Override
+ public void doGet(HttpServletRequest request,
+ HttpServletResponse response) throws IOException, ServletException {
+
+ request.setAttribute("categories", this.categories);
+ request.getRequestDispatcher("WEB-INF/metrics-guidelines.jsp")
+ .forward(request, response);
+ }
+}
+
diff --git a/src/main/resources/web.xml b/src/main/resources/web.xml
index 045dd2e..f92813a 100644
--- a/src/main/resources/web.xml
+++ b/src/main/resources/web.xml
@@ -218,6 +218,17 @@
</servlet-mapping>
<servlet>
+ <servlet-name>MetricsGuidelinesServlet</servlet-name>
+ <servlet-class>
+ org.torproject.metrics.web.MetricsGuidelinesServlet
+ </servlet-class>
+ </servlet>
+ <servlet-mapping>
+ <servlet-name>MetricsGuidelinesServlet</servlet-name>
+ <url-pattern>/metrics-guidelines.html</url-pattern>
+ </servlet-mapping>
+
+ <servlet>
<servlet-name>NewsServlet</servlet-name>
<servlet-class>
org.torproject.metrics.web.NewsServlet
diff --git a/src/main/resources/web/jsps/metrics-guidelines.jsp b/src/main/resources/web/jsps/metrics-guidelines.jsp
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0f06fe5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/src/main/resources/web/jsps/metrics-guidelines.jsp
@@ -0,0 +1,223 @@
+<%@ taglib prefix="c" uri="http://java.sun.com/jsp/jstl/core"; %>
+<%@ taglib prefix="fn" uri="http://java.sun.com/jsp/jstl/functions"; %>
+<jsp:include page="top.jsp">
+ <jsp:param name="pageTitle" value="Sources – Tor Metrics"/>
+ <jsp:param name="navActive" value="Sources"/>
+</jsp:include>
+
+<div class="container">
+<ul class="breadcrumb">
+<li><a href="/">Home</a></li>
+<li><a href="sources.html">Sources</a></li>
+<li class="active">Guidelines for getting your data into Tor Metrics</li>
+</ul>
+</div>
+
+<div class="container">
+
+<h1>Guidelines for getting your data into Tor Metrics
+<a href="#metrics-guidelines" id="metrics-guidelines" class="anchor">#</a></h1>
+
+<h2>Scope and preliminaries</h2>
+
+<p>This document provides guidelines to authors and operators of tools that
+ collect data about the publicly deployed Tor network that would like to
+ contribute data, or allow data to be contributed easily by others using
+ the tool, to Tor Metrics.</p>
+
+<p>This document does not discuss how to ensure measurements are safe, for this
+ refer to the Research Safety Board Guidelines [<a href="#ref-0">0</a>] and Guidelines for
+ Performing Safe Measurement on the Internet [<a href="#ref-1">1</a>].</p>
+
+<h2>What data belongs on Tor Metrics?</h2>
+
+<ul>
+<li>If it happens in the public deployed Tor network it likely belongs on Tor
+ Metrics.</li>
+<li>If it happens for a short term only, like for a research project, it's
+ unlikely worth the effort to have Tor Metrics archive, publish, aggregate,
+ and visualize it. In this case you should collect the data yourself (keeping
+ in mind research ethics!), and we can later talk about linking to it or even
+ using it as external data.</li>
+<li>If your data is a combination of existing data on Tor Metrics plus maybe
+ external data, we shouldn't add it, either. In such a case we should rather
+ talk about extending our services towards what your service does, if that
+ makes sense.</li>
+</ul>
+
+<h2>What data do you want to see on Tor Metrics?</h2>
+
+<p>This section aims to help you organize your thoughts before making a request
+ to the Metrics team. It might be that there are good reasons that something is
+ not done in one of the preferred ways, but ideally data collection tools can
+ be written with this guidelines in mind.</p>
+
+<ul>
+<li>What is your data about? Is it about servers or users or both? Is it
+ passively gathered or actively measured or both?</li>
+<li>This will help us to decide how we might present the data on Tor Metrics
+ and perhaps which other datasets we have that might benefit from being
+ combined with the new dataset.</li>
+<li>Is there a way for you to aggregate the data before you hand it over to us?
+ Of course this requires more thinking upfront, but it's a great way to ensure
+ not to give out too sensitive data to us or anyone else. It's not always
+ possible or even useful to aggregate data and discard the original data,
+ though. Two examples:<ol>
+ <li>Relays count how many clients download the consensus from them and from
+ which country they connect. When 24 hours have passed, they include the
+ count by country in their next extra-info descriptor. This is aggregated
+ data. The obviously more sensitive, non-aggregated variant would be for
+ relays to provide a log of clients downloading consensuses.</li>
+ <li>The torproject.org webservers keep highly sanitized logs of web clients
+ making requests to them that we sanitize even more before we archive them.
+ This is non-aggregated data. The possibly less sensitive aggregated variant
+ would be for webservers to count requests by requested URL or similar.</li>
+ </ol></li>
+<li>Is the data you're planning to give us too sensitive? If so, can you sanitize
+ it yourself before giving it to us (we can help you with that), or does the
+ sanitizing need to happen on our side (we should still involve you in this
+ case)?
+<p>There are currently cases where Tor Metrics performs the sanitization of
+ data before archiving, but the preferred system would sanitize the data as
+ close to the source as possible to minimize the possibility that sensitive
+ data could be leaked.</li>
+<li>How will you expect that Tor Metrics will fetch your data? For most data
+ currently, CollecTor fetches from a web server secured with TLS. This is
+ the easiest and quickest method to implement and so there should be a good
+ reason to not use this method.</li>
+<li>When is your data available and for how long? Ideally, we'd survive reboots
+ or downtimes on our side for up to 72 hours without losing any of your data.
+ Typically, you'd implement this using a cache. If that is hard or impossible
+ to do on your side, we'll have to think about adding redundancy on our side.
+ That's all possible and we did it before, it'll just make the process take
+ longer.</li>
+<li>Do you expect any difficulties on our side to write code that processes your
+ data? If we only need to fetch and store your data, probably not. But if we
+ have to inflate, parse, verify, combine, sanitize, split, and deflate your
+ data, maybe. And if we need to include fancy crypto libraries in order to
+ process your data, then for sure. Any intuitions you have about possible
+ difficulties would be good to know, even if things turn out to be easier in
+ the end.
+<p>As far as possible, use simple formats for providing data. The Tor Directory
+ Protocol meta-format [<a href="#ref-2">2</a>, §1.2] is a simple format for which we already have
+ parsers. Without good reason, do not serialize to formats such as YAML, TOML,
+ etc. as this would require adding a new parsing library into Tor Metrics just
+ to parse the new data.</p></li>
+<li>How much data do you think you'll give us over the next five years? A
+ ballpark figure is fine, like the number of bytes as a power of ten.</li>
+ </ul>
+
+<h2>What belongs into the data format for the data to be archived?</h2>
+
+<dl>
+<dt>Timestamp</dt><dd>We're using the timestamp to place the data item into the right
+ archive file, among other things. Exception: microdescriptors do not contain
+ a timestamp, which makes them a pain to archive.</dd>
+<dt>Source identifier</dt><dd>Ideally, we'd expect a cryptographic identifier of the
+ source, but if that is not available, any identifier will do. Exception: exit
+ lists do not contain a source identifier, because there happened to be just
+ one exit list scanner in the network; you can see how this doesn't scale so
+ well.</dd>
+<dt>Generator identifier</dt><dd>The name of software and its version (either release
+ or a commit reference) that produced the result. If a bug is discovered in the
+ software then this allows us to see which data may have been affected by it.</dd>
+<dt>Network location</dt><dd>If performing active measurement, the network location of
+ the vantage point (e.g. IP address, ASN, and/or country) can help to provide
+ context when comparing between different vantage points.</dd>
+<dt>Signature</dt><dd>The signature is the proof that the source produced the data item,
+ not us. And even if we don't verify all signatures, others might want to do
+ that. If you are using the Tor Directory Protocol meta-format to serialize
+ your metrics then signing metrics using RSA or Ed25519 signatures can be
+ done easily. Signatures should not be detached to keep fetching, archiving
+ and validating simple. Exception: hello, exit list, you again!</dd>
+</dl>
+
+<h2>First steps</h2>
+
+<p>You're still reading, so it seems that we caught your interest! How should we
+ start?</p>
+
+<ul>
+<li>Is the data already publicly available somewhere and all you want is discuss
+ a way to include it in Tor Metrics? That's easy then. Just share with us what
+ you have and we can talk.</li>
+<li>If the data is not public yet, do you maybe have a data format that we can
+ discuss? Bonus points if it comes with samples, but only if you're absolutely
+ certain that the data is safe to be published.</li>
+<li>If you have none of the above, can you share logs with us, so that we can
+ help you derive a possible data format? It doesn't need to be recent logs
+ (even though time might not magically make your data safe to be published).
+ You could edit the logs and take out any parts you think are too sensitive.
+ And you should encrypt the data before sending it to us.</li>
+<li>If you have nothing at all yet, let's talk anyway. Describe to us what you think would be good to include in Tor Metrics, and we'll figure something
+ out.</li>
+</ul>
+
+<h2>How will Tor Metrics include the data?</h2>
+
+ <p>It's a process to get your data on Tor Metrics, and not a short one. Let's go
+ through the necessary steps for doing it. After each step we should together
+ decide whether we're ready to move forward, need to take a step back, or maybe
+ even stop the project, because we found out that it's not what we wanted.</p>
+
+<ul>
+ <li>If you can, give us a few months as heads-up. Ideally, it won't take us that
+ long to do this project, but we'd prefer to make room for it in our next
+ six-month roadmap. Otherwise we might not be able to do it right away.</li>
+<li> We discuss your data format with you and other Tor developers on the public
+ tor-dev@ mailing list. Maybe you or we need to write a Tor proposal for this.</li>
+<li>We write a documentation page for the data format plus any necessary
+ sanitizing steps. See the Tor Metrics website and the tor-spec Git repository
+ for a couple of examples.</li>
+<li>We write code for metrics-lib and/or Stem to parse your data and verify the
+ data format. At this point we'll find out if there are any misunderstandings
+ regarding data types or data structure that we haven't seen before.</li>
+<li>We write code for CollecTor to fetch and archive your data, but without
+ publishing just yet. As part of this we also agree on file names and URLs
+ where your data will later be available.</li>
+<li>We make a one-time visualization using your data, mostly as a sanity check.
+ You'd be surprised how many issues are hiding well enough that we would
+ otherwise not find them.</li>
+<li>At this point we can think about adding your data to our services like
+ Onionoo, Relay Search, and ExoneraTor and our visualizations on Tor Metrics.
+ Typically, we'd do that as a separate project, though.</li>
+<li>Finally we make your data available for download on CollecTor and put the
+ documentation on the Tor Metrics website. We announce that your data is now
+ on Tor Metrics.</li>
+</ul>
+
+<h2>Maintenance</h2>
+
+<p>Congratulations, your data is now on Tor Metrics. But that's not the end of the
+ story! Here's what we need you to do as long as we have your data:</p>
+
+<ul><li>Make sure that we always get the data by whatever means we came up with
+ together. Avoid longer downtimes and fix any related issues in a timely
+ fashion. We do care about this, because people will come to us and complain
+ that "our" data is not up-to-date, when it may in fact be your fault.</li>
+<li>If you're planning to make any changes that affect the data format or the way
+ how the data comes to us, talk to us beforehand with enough time to make such
+ changes. Several weeks in advance would be good, because we may have to
+ inform our users about upcoming changes and give them some time to update
+ their tools.</li>
+ <li>Let's be honest: we had to remove data from Tor Metrics in the past, because
+ the services providing them have become unreliable or unmaintained. In such a
+ case we'd talk to you and try to improve the situation. But if that doesn't
+ work, we'd remove your data from Tor Metrics with enough heads up time for
+ you and others to prepare. We'd very likely archive your data and keep it
+ around in such a case. Sorry, and thanks for understanding!</li>
+</ul>
+
+<h2>References</h2>
+
+[<a id="ref-0">0</a>] Tor Project. Research Safety Board Guidelines.
+ <a href="https://research.torproject.org/safetyboard/#guidelines";>https://research.torproject.org/safetyboard/#guidelines</a><br>
+[<a id="ref-1">1</a>] I. Learmonth. Guidelines for Performing Safe Measurement on the Internet.
+ (Work-in-progress). <a href="https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-learmonth-pearg-safe-internet-measurement/";>https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-learmonth-pearg-safe-internet-measurement/</a><br>
+[<a id="ref-2">2</a>] Tor Project. Tor Directory Protocol, version 3.
+ <a href="https://spec.torproject.org/dir-spec";>https://spec.torproject.org/dir-spec</a>
+
+</div><!-- .container -->
+
+<jsp:include page="bottom.jsp"/>
+
diff --git a/src/main/resources/web/jsps/sources.jsp b/src/main/resources/web/jsps/sources.jsp
index a43d681..1f2930c 100644
--- a/src/main/resources/web/jsps/sources.jsp
+++ b/src/main/resources/web/jsps/sources.jsp
@@ -41,6 +41,12 @@
</ul>
</div>
+ <div class="container">
+ <h2>New sources <a href="#new" name="new" class="anchor">#</a></h2>
+ <p>We have written <a href="/metrics-guidelines.html">guidelines for Tor developers</a> that would like metrics collected by their service to be integrated
+ with Tor Metrics.</p>
+ </div>
+
<div class="container">
<h2>Specifications <a href="#specifications" name="specifications" class="anchor">#</a></h2>
<p>The following specification documents are available for Tor network data.</p>
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