Re: controller GETINFO ns/id/fingerprint "s" record

[Nick Mathewson <nickm@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Thu, May 29, 2008 at 12:03:48PM -0700, Wesley Kenzie wrote:
> > On Tue, May 27, 2008 at 02:19:22PM -0700, Wesley Kenzie wrote:
> > > >"where does the data originate from when the controller GETINFO 
> > > >command is used?  Does it just grab data out of the 
> > cached* files on 
> > > >disk?  Or poll one of the directory authorities?  Or 
> > something else?"
> > > 
> > > I am still waiting for someone to help with this question.  Using a 
> > > controller interface, when I issue a GETINFO ns/id/* or GETINFO 
> > > desc/id/* command where does the response data come from?  Does it 
> > > just come out of the cloud from one of the directory authorities?  
> > > Does it get read from the local cached* file(s)?  Does it get 
> > > calculated dynamically in real time?
> > 
> > It gets answered by your local Tor process based on the 
> > directory information that it has locally. It doesn't trigger 
> > any new fetches.
> > 
> 
> So how often is the local directory information updated?

See https://www.torproject.org/svn/trunk/doc/spec/dir-spec.txt ,
section 4.3 and section 5.1.  See also the FetchDirInfoEarly option.

>  And if I use the
> controller to GETINFO desc/all-recent and GETINFO ns/all and spin through
> all the responses, is this sufficient to ensure the local directory
> information is as current as possible?

No.  GETINFO commands do not influence the download schedule.

Yrs,
-- 
Nick