Hello! Alex Færøy, Nick Mathewson, and I have just released a source tarball for a new Tor alpha (sig). This is the first time for Alex and me making a Tor release! We're hoping that rotating some of our more tedious responsibilities among all the developers on the Network Team will relieve unfair pressure on people like Nick who pour enormous amounts of time and effort into these tasks. You can help us out by testing the alpha, and please report any issues you encounter!

A new Tor Browser alpha is expected to be released in mid-October, after our upcoming meeting in Montréal, which will ship with this alpha, or possibly a newer one.

Changelog

Tor 0.3.2.2-alpha is the second release in the 0.3.2 series. This release fixes several minor bugs in the new scheduler and next- generation onion services; both features were newly added in the 0.3.2 series. Other fixes in this alpha include several fixes for non-fatal tracebacks which would appear in logs.

With the aim to stabilise the 0.3.2 series by 15 December 2017, this alpha does not contain any substantial new features. Minor features include better testing and logging.

The following comprises the complete list of changes included in tor-0.3.2.2-alpha:

Changes in version 0.3.2.2-alpha - 2017-09-29

• Major bugfixes (relay, crash, assertion failure):
  • Fix a timing-based assertion failure that could occur when the circuit out-of-memory handler freed a connection's output buffer. Fixes bug 23690; bugfix on 0.2.6.1-alpha.
• Major bugfixes (scheduler):
  • If a channel is put into the scheduler's pending list, then it starts closing, and then if the scheduler runs before it finishes closing, the scheduler will get stuck trying to flush its cells while the lower layers refuse to cooperate. Fix that race condition by giving the scheduler an escape method. Fixes bug 23676; bugfix on 0.3.2.1-alpha.

• Minor features (build, compilation):
  • The "check-changes" feature is now part of the "make check" tests; we'll use it to try to prevent misformed changes files from accumulating. Closes ticket 23564.
  • Tor builds should now fail if there are any mismatches between the C type representing a configuration variable and the C type the data-driven parser uses to store a value there. Previously, we needed to check these by hand, which sometimes led to mistakes. Closes ticket 23643.
• Minor features (directory authorities):
  • Remove longclaw's IPv6 address, as it will soon change. Authority IPv6 addresses were originally added in 0.2.8.1-alpha. This leaves 3/8 directory authorities with IPv6 addresses, but there are also 52 fallback directory mirrors with IPv6 addresses. Resolves 19760.
• Minor features (hidden service, circuit, logging):
  • Improve logging of many callsite in the circuit subsystem to print the circuit identifier(s).
  • Log when we cleanup an intro point from a service so we know when and for what reason it happened. Closes ticket 23604.
• Minor features (logging):
  • Log more circuit information whenever we are about to try to package a relay cell on a circuit with a nonexistent n_chan. Attempt to diagnose ticket 8185.
  • Improve info-level log identification of particular circuits, to help with debugging. Closes ticket 23645.
• Minor features (relay):
  • When choosing which circuits can be expired as unused, consider circuits from clients even if those clients used regular CREATE cells to make them; and do not consider circuits from relays even if they were made with CREATE_FAST. Part of ticket 22805.
• Minor features (robustness):
  • Change several fatal assertions when flushing buffers into non- fatal assertions, to prevent any recurrence of 23690.
• Minor features (spec conformance, bridge, diagnostic):
  • When handling the USERADDR command on an ExtOrPort, warn when the transports provides a USERADDR with no port. In a future version, USERADDR commands of this format may be rejected. Detects problems related to ticket 23080.
• Minor features (testing):
  • Add a unit test to make sure that our own generated platform string will be accepted by directory authorities. Closes ticket 22109.
• Minor bugfixes (bootstrapping):
  • When warning about state file clock skew, report the correct direction for the detected skew. Fixes bug 23606; bugfix on 0.2.8.1-alpha.
  • Avoid an assertion failure when logging a state file clock skew very early in bootstrapping. Fixes bug 23607; bugfix on 0.3.2.1-alpha.
• Minor bugfixes (build, compilation):
  • Fix a compilation warning when building with zstd support on 32-bit platforms. Fixes bug 23568; bugfix on 0.3.1.1-alpha. Found and fixed by Andreas Stieger.
  • When searching for OpenSSL, don't accept any OpenSSL library that lacks TLSv1_1_method(): Tor doesn't build with those versions. Additionally, look in /usr/local/opt/openssl, if it's present. These changes together repair the default build on OSX systems with Homebrew installed. Fixes bug 23602; bugfix on 0.2.7.2-alpha.
• Minor bugfixes (compression):
  • Handle a pathological case when decompressing Zstandard data when the output buffer size is zero. Fixes bug 23551; bugfix on 0.3.1.1-alpha.
• Minor bugfixes (documentation):
  • Fix manpage to not refer to the obsolete (and misspelled) UseEntryGuardsAsDirectoryGuards parameter in the description of NumDirectoryGuards. Fixes bug 23611; bugfix on 0.2.4.8-alpha.
• Minor bugfixes (hidden service v3):
  • Don't log an assertion failure when we can't find the right information to extend to an introduction point. In rare cases, this could happen, causing a warning, even though tor would recover gracefully. Fixes bug 23159; bugfix on 0.3.2.1-alpha.
  • Pad RENDEZVOUS cell up to the size of the legacy cell which is much bigger so the rendezvous point can't distinguish which hidden service protocol is being used. Fixes bug 23420; bugfix on 0.3.2.1-alpha.
• Minor bugfixes (hidden service, relay):
  • Avoid a possible double close of a circuit by the intro point on error of sending the INTRO_ESTABLISHED cell. Fixes bug 23610; bugfix on 0.3.0.1-alpha.
• Minor bugfixes (logging, relay shutdown, annoyance):
  • When a circuit is marked for close, do not attempt to package any cells for channels on that circuit. Previously, we would detect this condition lower in the call stack, when we noticed that the circuit had no attached channel, and log an annoying message. Fixes bug 8185; bugfix on 0.2.5.4-alpha.
• Minor bugfixes (scheduler):
  • When switching schedulers due to a consensus change, we didn't give the new scheduler a chance to react to the consensus. Fix that. Fixes bug 23537; bugfix on 0.3.2.1-alpha.
  • Make the KISTSchedRunInterval option a non negative value. With this, the way to disable KIST through the consensus is to set it to 0. Fixes bug 23539; bugfix on 0.3.2.1-alpha.
  • Only notice log the selected scheduler when we switch scheduler types. Fixes bug 23552; bugfix on 0.3.2.1-alpha.
  • Avoid a compilation warning on macOS in scheduler_ev_add() caused by a different tv_usec data type. Fixes bug 23575; bugfix on 0.3.2.1-alpha.
  • Make a hard exit if tor is unable to pick a scheduler which can happen if the user specifies a scheduler type that is not supported and not other types in Schedulers. Fixes bug 23581; bugfix on 0.3.2.1-alpha.
  • Properly initialize the scheduler last run time counter so it is not 0 at the first tick. Fixes bug 23696; bugfix on 0.3.2.1-alpha.
• Minor bugfixes (testing):
  • Capture and detect several "Result does not fit" warnings in unit tests on platforms with 32-bit time_t. Fixes bug 21800; bugfix on 0.2.9.3-alpha.
  • Fix additional channelpadding unit test failures by using mocked time instead of actual time for all tests. Fixes bug 23608; bugfix on 0.3.1.1-alpha.
  • The removal of some old scheduler options caused some tests to fail on BSD systems. Assume current behavior is correct and make the tests pass again. Fixes bug 23566; bugfix on 0.3.2.1-alpha.
• Code simplification and refactoring:
  • Remove various ways of testing circuits and connections for "clientness"; instead, favor channel_is_client(). Part of ticket 22805.
• Deprecated features:
  • The ReachableDirAddresses and ClientPreferIPv6DirPort options are now deprecated; they do not apply to relays, and they have had no effect on clients since 0.2.8.x. Closes ticket 19704.
• Documentation:
  • HiddenServiceVersion man page entry wasn't mentioning the now supported version 3. Fixes ticket 23580; bugfix on 0.3.2.1-alpha.
  • Clarify that the Address option is entirely about setting an advertised IPv4 address. Closes ticket 18891.
  • Clarify the manpage's use of the term "address" to clarify what kind of address is intended. Closes ticket 21405.
  • Document that onion service subdomains are allowed, and ignored. Closes ticket 18736.

 

[image: Stitches Little on Etsy]