Tor 0.2.1.17-rc released

by phobos | July 13, 2009

Tor 0.2.1.17-rc marks the fourth -- and hopefully last -- release
candidate for the 0.2.1.x series. It lays the groundwork for further
client performance improvements, and also fixes a big bug with directory
authorities that were causing them to assign Guard and Stable flags
poorly.

The Windows bundles also finally include the geoip database that we
thought we'd been shipping since 0.2.0.x (oops), and the OS X bundles
should actually install Torbutton rather than giving you a cryptic
failure message (oops).

This is a release candidate! That means that we don't know of any
remaining show-stopping bugs, and 0.2.1.18 will be the new stable if
there are no problems. Please test it, and tell us about any problems
that you find.

https://www.torproject.org/download

Changes in version 0.2.1.17-rc - 2009-07-02
Major features:

  • Clients now use the bandwidth values in the consensus, rather than
    the bandwidth values in each relay descriptor. This approach opens
    the door to more accurate bandwidth estimates once the directory
    authorities start doing active measurements. Implements more of
    proposal 141.

Major bugfixes:

  • When Tor clients restart after 1-5 days, they discard all their
    cached descriptors as too old, but they still use the cached
    consensus document. This approach is good for robustness, but
    bad for performance: since they don't know any bandwidths, they
    end up choosing at random rather than weighting their choice by
    speed. Fixed by the above feature of putting bandwidths in the
    consensus. Bugfix on 0.2.0.x.
  • Directory authorities were neglecting to mark relays down in their
    internal histories if the relays fall off the routerlist without
    ever being found unreachable. So there were relays in the histories
    that haven't been seen for eight months, and are listed as being
    up for eight months. This wreaked havoc on the "median wfu"
    and "median mtbf" calculations, in turn making Guard and Stable
    flags very wrong, hurting network performance. Fixes bugs 696 and
    969. Bugfix on 0.2.0.6-alpha.

Minor bugfixes:

  • Serve the DirPortFrontPage page even when we have been approaching
    our quotas recently. Fixes bug 1013; bugfix on 0.2.1.8-alpha.
  • The control port would close the connection before flushing long
    replies, such as the network consensus, if a QUIT command was issued
    before the reply had completed. Now, the control port flushes all
    pending replies before closing the connection. Also fixed a spurious
    warning when a QUIT command is issued after a malformed or rejected
    AUTHENTICATE command, but before the connection was closed. Patch
    by Marcus Griep. Bugfix on 0.2.0.x; fixes bugs 1015 and 1016.
  • When we can't find an intro key for a v2 hidden service descriptor,
    fall back to the v0 hidden service descriptor and log a bug message.
    Workaround for bug 1024.

Minor features:

  • If we're a relay and we change our IP address, be more verbose
    about the reason that made us change. Should help track down
    further bugs for relays on dynamic IP addresses.

Comments

Please note that the comment area below has been archived.

July 18, 2009

In reply to by Anonymous (not verified)

Permalink

Why do you write it correctly in the subject, but wrong in the comment itself?

July 14, 2009

Permalink

The country flags in the left column (after selecting "View the Network" from the Vidalia Control Panel) are missing in the new Vidalia/Firefox bundle. Is this a new security measure, or a fault? The IPs would tell the country, anyway, so why not the flags?

Can I fix this, or is this intentional by Tor?

What should I do?

Thank you very much.

July 25, 2009

In reply to phobos

Permalink

Thank you for your reply.

No matter how long I have Tor running, the country flags of the computers on the network do not fill in (the window brought up by the "View the network" option on the Vidalia Control Panel).

Do you have any other suggestions? All I have is a series of question marks in place of the flags, and it's driving me a little nuts.

Thank you very much.

May 12, 2010

Permalink

I have a similar question as to why Vidalia doesn't show all IP location in the list? It only show the question mark for some, been like this for weeks now. Does Tor, Vidalia or the bundle has a dedicated discussion forum so I can fix my geoip issues?