Re: Grrr...SafeLogging doesn't work in 0.2.1.12-alpha :-{

[Scott Bennett <bennett@xxxxxxxxxx>]

     On Tue, 10 Feb 2009 14:59:44 -0500 Roger Dingledine <arma@xxxxxxx>
wrote:
>On Tue, Feb 10, 2009 at 12:22:57PM -0600, Scott Bennett wrote:
>>      I think we need a quick patch for this one.  I just built and fired up
>> 0.2.1.12-alpha with no changes to torrc from what I had already.  As soon
>> as exit requests came in, I saw (at INFO-level logging) that IP addresses are
>> now being logged as the exit connections are made, whereas in 0.2.1.7-alpha
>> and earlier, the port numbers appeared, but the IP addresses had been scrubbed.
>> I tried adding "SafeLogging 1" to torrc in case the default had somehow gotten
>> changed, but that seemed to have no effect either.
>
>Whoops. Thanks for the bug report. Karsten just fixed it in svn, and
>the fix will be included in the next development release.

     Thanks!
>
>In general, production Tor relays should log at notice. Logging at info
>will slow them down. Also, I think there might be other info-level logs
>that aren't scrubbed properly -- we only made sure to do notice and warn
>and err.

     I haven't seen any evidence that info-level logging is slowing my
relay to any noticeable degree, and that stands to reason because tor is
idle 90% - 100% of the time anyway.  Unless tor is using O_NDELAY for log
files, the writes are not a problem at all under FreeBSD.  (I log to files,
rather than to syslog.)  Most of the problems I've identified since I started
using tor were identified because I saw them appearing in the logs.  These
problems have frequently been network problems rather than tor problems per
se, but the logs, combined with netstat-based connection count tracking, have
been my early warning system.
     Also, info-level logging is the only way I can collect any statistics
about exit usage by port number, which was why I immediately noticed the
problem described above.  The changed message format royally screwed up my
commands and scripts to process the exit port number information from the
logs.
     In short, I really do need to run info-level logging, and I do *not*
want stuff like exit IP addresses showing up in it just as I do *not* want
any other non-OR addresses showing up in it.  I have never, not even briefly,
run tor with SafeLogging disabled and have no intention of doing so in the
future.
>
>If somebody wants to walk through all the info-level logs and report
>others that are likely to be problems, that'd be great.
>
     I'll keep my eyes open and report any I find.


                                  Scott Bennett, Comm. ASMELG, CFIAG
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