Re: Weird-looking circuits in Vidalia

[Roger Dingledine <arma@xxxxxxx>]

On Tue, Mar 25, 2008 at 01:41:51PM -0700, ZiM wrote:
> When I started up the newly installed Tor 0.2.0.22-rc r14114 for first
>time, in addition to the typical Guardnode1,Nodename2,Nodename3 circuits,
>some weird lines ones below appeared in the Vidalia circuits list.
> 
> $F5EE4F21D...
> $38014A01C...
> 
> I copied only first few characters to this message. Those look like raw
>Tor node fingerprints or something. They disappeared after Tor had been
>running for a while. Is this some new feature, Vidalia bug or something
>weird going on?

They're caused by a new Tor feature. Starting with Tor 0.2.0.22-rc,
Tor does encrypted directory requests rather than plaintext (http)
directory requests. These show up in the Vidalia circuit list as a bunch
of one-hop circuits, since in reality that's what they are.

I wonder if Vidalia should hide these one-hop circuits from the user? Or
maybe users in the future will get used to seeing them in the list?

--Roger