1 Filename: 164-reporting-server-status.txt
2 Title: Reporting the status of server votes
10 When a given node isn't listed in the directory, it isn't always easy
11 to tell why. This proposal suggest a quick-and-dirty way for
12 authorities to export not only how they voted, but why, and a way to
13 collate the information.
17 Right now, if you want to know the reason why your server was listed
18 a certain way in the Tor directory, the following steps are
21 - Look through your log for reports of what the authority said
22 when you tried to upload.
24 - Look at the consensus; see if you're listed.
26 - Wait a while, see if things get better.
28 - Download the votes from all the authorities, and see how they
29 voted. Try to figure out why.
31 - If you think they'll listen to you, ask some authority
32 operators to look you up in their mtbf files and logs to see
33 why they voted as they did.
39 We should add a new vote-like information-only document that
40 authorities serve on request. Call it a "vote info". It is
41 generated at the same time as a vote, but used only for
42 determining why a server voted as it did. It is served from
43 /tor/status-vote-info/current/authority[.z]
45 It differs from a vote in that:
47 * Its vote-status field is 'vote-info'.
49 * It includes routers that the authority would not include
52 For these, it includes an "omitted" line with an English
53 message explaining why they were omitted.
55 * For each router, it includes a line describing its WFU and
58 "stability <mtbf> up-since='date'"
59 "uptime <wfu> down-since='date'"
61 * It describes the WFU and MTBF thresholds it requires to
62 vote for a given router in various roles in the header.
65 "flag-requirement <flag-name> <field> <op> <value>"
69 "flag-requirement Guard uptime > 80"
71 * It includes info on routers all of whose descriptors that
72 were uploaded but rejected over the past few hours. The
73 "r" lines for these are the same as for regular routers.
74 The other lines are omitted for these routers, and are
75 replaced with a single "rejected" line, explaining (in
76 English) why the router was rejected.
79 A status site (like Torweather or Torstatus or another
80 tool) can poll these files when they are generated, collate
81 the data, and make it available to server operators.
85 This document makes no provisions for caching these "vote
86 info" documents. If many people wind up fetching them
87 aggressively from the authorities, that would be bad.