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

[Roger Dingledine <arma@xxxxxxx>]

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.

> I have recently been doing some timings of the controller interface, and
> find that on average I can get a response to one of these GETINFO commands
> in less than 0.06 seconds, and sometimes in as little as 0.0001 seconds.
> However there are times when it takes up to 20+ seconds to get this same
> data.  I am struggling to understand what might be going on here...

Do you mean that the getinfo command hangs for 20 seconds and then
answers? Or that getinfo tells you it doesn't have an answer, and up to
20 seconds passes, with you continually doing new getinfos, before you
get the answer you want?

If the former, that sounds like a bug, and you should give us debug-level
logs with details. If the latter, it sounds like you're asking for data
that your Tor doesn't have yet.

--Roger