Hello all,
Thanks to the outreach work[0], this month we saw another uptick in support
requests from Chinese speaking users. This has also helped us receive some very
useful feedback from these users.
I worked on some small documentation updates in the Tor Browser User Manual[1]
and the Support Portal[2] and added a section in the manual about how to check
the Tor Browser version one has installed on their system[3]. I am also
involved in testing the latest Tor Browser Alphas in preparation of all the
documentation updates due to the upcoming Tor Browser 13.5 stable release.
We have noticed a significant drop in user requests via email from Russian
speaking countries last month and are investigating the potential reasons for that.
Following is a thorough breakdown of tickets our user support team handled in
April:
# Frontdesk (email support channel)
* 495(↓) RT tickets created
* 711(↑) RT tickets resolved
(Note: The number of 'resolved' ticket is higher
than usual because last month I closed a lot of tickets that we had already
responded to and solved but got reopened and move out of the 'resolved' queue
when users share their positive feedback.)
Tickets by numbers:
1. 313(↑) RT tickets: private bridge requests from Chinese speaking users.
2. 85(↓) RT tickets: circumventing censorship in Russian speaking countries.
3. 8 RT tickets: Reports of websites blocking Tor connections.
4. 7 RT tickets: Help with downloading (website / official mirror / GetTor),
installing and updating Tor Browser for Desktop.
5. 5(↑) RT tickets: circumventing censorship with Tor in Farsi.
6. 4(↓) RT tickets: private bridge and help with circumventing censorship
requests from regions where Tor is not blocked. The issues were mostly
resolved by troubleshooting and analysing Tor logs and the issues ranged
from - firewall, VPN & antivirus interrupting the connection to having an
incorrect system clock.
Highlighting some other topics we received questions and feedback:
7. Issue with installing the Snowflake web extension.[4]
8. Question about whether Tor Browser can be installed on AndroidTV.
9. Report of certain onion site being offline. Encouraged the person to
contact the onion site operator directly.
10. Help with setting snowflake standalone proxy.
11. Help with setting onion service.
12. Question about whther Tor Browser can be installed on ChromeOS.
13. Question about how to modify torrc to exit from a specific country. We
discourage users to do this.
14. Help with installing little-t-tor.[5]
15. 2 RT tickets: Question about the Private Browsing Mode(PBM) in Tor Browser
- "why do I have to login every time to sites when I restart the browser?" and "why
does websites don't remember my preferences when I relaunch the browser?".
# Telegram, WhatsApp and Signal Support channel
* 589(↓) tickets resolved
Breakdown:
* 563(↓) tickets on Telegram
* 23(↓) tickets on WhatsApp
* 3(↑) ticket on Signal
Tickets by numbers:
1. 372(↑) tickets: circumventing censorship in Russian speaking countries.
2. 54(↓) tickets: circumventing censorship with Tor in Farsi.
3. 46(↓) tickets: private bridge requests from Chinese speaking users.
4. 8 tickets: Help with installing Tor Browser on macOS.
5. 5 tickets: Issues installing the snowflake web extension.[4][6]
6. 3 tickets: Instructions to use bridges with little-t-tor.
Highlighting some other topics we received questions about:
7. 3 tickets: Issues loading the CAPTCHA when trying to get bridges from
BridgeDB. The issue is resolved.
8. Question about the Private Browsin Mode(PBM) in Tor Browser - "why does Tor
Browser on Android doesn't store my browsing history?"
9. Help with installing Tor Browser on Windows.
10. Report of website blocking Tor connections.
# Highlights from the Tor Forum
1. New Tor Browser Alpha Release: Tor Browser 13.5a7. Please help us test the
new alpha![7]
2. Latest versions of Tor Browser not working on older versions of operating systems.[8]
3. Should I change/add fonts to Tor Browser?[9]
4."Firefox ESR Root Certificate's Strange Rollback"[10]
Thanks!
e.
Note: (↑), (↓) and (-) are indicating if the number of tickets we received for
these topics have been increasing, decreasing or have been the same from the
previous month respectively.
[0]: https://github.com/torproject/tor4zh/
[1]: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/web/manual/-/commits/main?author=ebanam
[2]: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/web/support/-/commits/main?author=ebanam
[3]: https://support.torproject.org/tbb/check-torbrowser-version/
[4]: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snow…
[5]: https://support.torproject.org/little-t-tor/install-little-t-tor/
[6]: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snow…
[7]: https://forum.torproject.org/t/new-alpha-release-tor-browser-13-5a7/12519
[8]: https://forum.torproject.org/t/tor-browser-v12-0-4-not-working-older-system…
[9]: https://forum.torproject.org/t/tor-browser-having-weird-font-while-other-br…
[10]: https://forum.torproject.org/t/firefox-esr-root-certificates-strange-rollba…
Hi! This is Nina and my April’24 report!
In April, I resolved 424 tickets:
On Telegram (@TorProjectSupportBot) - 346
On RT (frontdesk@tpo) - 73
On WhatsApp (+447421000612) - 6
and on Signal (+17787431312) - 0.
There is a drop in email requests from Russian-speaking users, which
will be investigated further.
During that month I helped Russian-speaking users to bypass censorship,
shared bridges with them, helped with troubleshooting, tested new
bridges and collected user feedback.
MacOS and iOS
This month I got more of the usual iOS and macOS related issues. The
major issues were:
1. Some of our official website mirrors were blocked in Russia, and
macOS users are unable to get Tor Browser from our bot due to the issue
with macOS not trusting programs obtained from Telegram[1].
2. Tor Browserpluggable transports(PTs)do not work on older versions of
macOS.[2]Go 1.20 requires macOS 10.13 or higher and 1.21 requires macOS
10.15. User needs to upgrade their OS to use PTs.
3. There were many questions on what app to install on iOS and where to
get that, so I added a new template in Russian on that topic.
Russian translation reviewand Tor Browser User Manual improvements
In April I worked on the reviewof the Russian translation of the Tor
Browser User Manual and filed several issues:[3][4][5].
I also work on improving the user experience with the Telegram user
support channel (https://t.me/
<https://t.me/@TorProjectSupportBot>@TorProjectSupportBot
<https://t.me/@TorProjectSupportBot>), testing the best welcome-message [6].
[1]
https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/applications/tor-browser-build/-/issues/4…
[2]
https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/applications/tor-browser/-/issues/42507
[3] https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/web/manual/-/issues/163
[4] https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/web/manual/-/issues/162
[5] https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/web/manual/-/issues/164
[6] https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/community/support/-/issues/40149
Hi all :)
This is my monthly status report for April 2024 with the main relevant
activities I have done during the period.
## 0. Research
## 1. Development
* Onionspray Log Parser, a log file parser for proxy-based onionsites:
* Released version 2.0.0:
https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/onion-services/onionspray-log-parser/-/bl…
* Onion Launchpad, a landing page for onionsites:
* Released version 1.0.0 with enhancements such as a privacy policy and
improvements in the optional metrics aggregation:
https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/onion-services/onion-launchpad/-/mileston…
* Onionprobe, an Onion Service monitoring suite:
* Released version 1.2.0 with many fixes and enhancements:
https://forum.torproject.org/t/onionprobe-release-1-2-0/12442
* Oniongroove, an upcoming Onion Services manager:
* Worked on the prototype:
https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/onion-services/oniongroove/-/issues/3
* Right now this prototype works only as a simple rewriting proxy for
existing websites, but it's being helpful to test Arti and other tools.
## 2. Support
* Ongoing sponsored work with deployment, maintenance and monitoring of Onion
Services.
* Did some other support related to setting up Onion Services.
## 3. Organization
Time spent (from the total available for Tor-related work):
| Category | Percentage
|---------------|------------
| Research | 3
| Development | 49
| Support | 23
| Organization | 25
|---------------|------------
| Total | 100
--
Silvio Rhatto
pronouns he/him
Hey everyone!
Here are our meeting logs:
http://meetbot.debian.net/tor-meeting/2024/tor-meeting.2024-05-02-16.15.html
And our meeting pad:
Anti-censorship
--------------------------------
Next meeting: Thursday, May 9 16:00 UTC
Facilitator: shelikhoo
^^^(See Facilitator Queue at tail)
Weekly meetings, every Thursday at 16:00 UTC, in #tor-meeting at OFTC
(channel is logged while meetings are in progress)
This week's Facilitator: meskio
== Goal of this meeting ==
Weekly check-in about the status of anti-censorship work at Tor.
Coordinate collaboration between people/teams on anti-censorship at the Tor Project and Tor community.
== Links to Useful documents ==
* Our anti-censorship roadmap:
* Roadmap:https://gitlab.torproject.org/groups/tpo/anti-censorship/-/boards
* The anti-censorship team's wiki page:
* https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/team/-/wikis/home
* Past meeting notes can be found at:
* https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-project/
* Tickets that need reviews: from sponsors, we are working on:
* All needs review tickets:
* https://gitlab.torproject.org/groups/tpo/anti-censorship/-/merge_requests?s…
* Sponsor 96 <-- meskio, shell, onyinyang, cohosh
* https://gitlab.torproject.org/groups/tpo/-/milestones/24
* Sponsor 150 <-- meskio working on it
* https://gitlab.torproject.org/groups/tpo/anti-censorship/-/issues/?label_na…
== Announcements ==
== Discussion ==
* Snowfalke API has insufficent support for passing additional settings in constructor
* trying to avoid making breaking changes to the API
* one option is to use builders: https://docs.rs/http/0.2.9/http/request/struct.Builder.html
* another is to use WithXXXX methods: https://pkg.go.dev/google.golang.org/grpc#WithAuthority
* shelikhoo will create an issue to start the discussion on a possible version 3 API for snowflake
* Snowflake broker Debian version EOL
* https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snow…
* we'll do a fresh install in a new VM
* dcf1 will provision a VM for it
* shelikhoo will do the setup
* ed25519 keys in bridgelines
* https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/core/torspec/-/issues/257
* there is a conversation on how to integrate ed25519 keys into bridgelines
== Actions ==
== Interesting links ==
* https://github.com/ooni/utls-light by arturo, an alternative approach to modifying TLS fingerprints that requires less invasive crypto/tls library changes. It works by parsing the serialized native crypto/tls handshake messages before they are sent, and re-serializing them according to a desired schema.
== Reading group ==
* We will discuss "" on
*
* Questions to ask and goals to have:
* What aspects of the paper are questionable?
* Are there immediate actions we can take based on this work?
* Are there long-term actions we can take based on this work?
* Is there future work that we want to call out in hopes that others will pick it up?
== Updates ==
Name:
This week:
- What you worked on this week.
Next week:
- What you are planning to work on next week.
Help with:
- Something you need help with.
cecylia (cohosh): 2024-05-02
Last week:
- opened an issue in core tor about MyFamily for bridges
- https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/core/tor/-/issues/40935
- snowflake webextension work
This week:
- make changes to Lox encrypted bridge table
- https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/lox/-/merge_requests/147
- follow up on reported SQS errors
- update wasm-bindgen fork to fix some bugs and hopefully upstream changes
- create a Lox test environment and instructions for the browser team
- https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/applications/tor-browser/-/issues/42503
Needs help with:
dcf: 2024-05-02
Last week:
Next week:
- open issue to have snowflake-client log whenever KCPInErrors is nonzero https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snow…
- parent: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snow…
- open issue to disable /debug endpoint on snowflake broker
- move snowflake-02 to new VM
Help with:
meskio: 2023-05-02
Last week:
- implement email distributor in rdsys (rdsys#186)
Next week:
- test email distributor in rdsys (rdsys#186)
- improve privacy on rdsys metrics reusing snowflake techniques (snowflake#40354)
Shelikhoo: 2024-05-02
Last Week:
- [Merge Request WIP] Add Container Image Mirroring from Tor Gitlab to Docker Hub(https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/…
- [Dev] Snowflake Performance Improvement
- Fix ipv6 connectivity with restricted address support https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/webt…
- Merge request reviews
Next Week/TODO:
- Revise Snowflake Performance Improvement MR(cont.)
- Merge request reviews
onyinyang: 2023-05-02
Last week(s):
- Responding to pre-existing MR reviews and other notifications/questions in gitlab
This week:
- attempt hyper upgrade and tokio upgrade
Probably next week and beyond:
- preparing for upcoming panel (maybe)
- implement some preliminary user feedback mechanism to identify bridge blocking based on Vecna's work
- improve metrics collection/think about how to show Lox is working/valuable
- sketch out Lox blog post/usage notes for forum
(long term things were discussed at the meeting!): https://pad.riseup.net/p/tor-ac-community-azaleas-room-keep
- brainstorming grouping strategies for Lox buckets (of bridges) and gathering context on how types of bridges are distributed/use in practice
Question: What makes a bridge usable for a given user, and how can we encode that to best ensure we're getting the most appropriate resources to people?
1. Are there some obvious grouping strategies that we can already consider?
e.g., by PT, by bandwidth (lower bandwidth bridges sacrificed to open-invitation buckets?), by locale (to be matched with a requesting user's geoip or something?)
2. Does it make sense to group 3 bridges/bucket, so trusted users have access to 3 bridges (and untrusted users have access to 1)? More? Less?
theodorsm: 2023-04-25
Last weeks:
- Extended Pion dtls library to support hooking of client hellos, server hellos and certificate request (PR: https://github.com/pion/dtls/pull/631). Fingerprint generation of firefox and chrome + mimicking using the client hello hook have been moved to its own repo: https://github.com/theodorsm/covertDTLS
- Analyzed the snowflake captures done in "Snowflake Anonymous Network Traffic Identification" paper: no handshakes found, so not relevant for me
- Verified the consistency of the fingerprint generation
Next weeks:
- Add hook to pion/webrtc so it can be used in snowflake.
- Test and validate mimicked client hello with snowflake.
- Add randomized fingerprint
Help with:
Facilitator Queue:
shelikhoo onyinyang meskio
1. First available staff in the Facilitator Queue will be the facilitator for the meeting
2. After facilitating the meeting, the facilitator will be moved to the tail of the queue
--
meskio | https://meskio.net/
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
My contact info: https://meskio.net/crypto.txt
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Nos vamos a Croatan.
Hi again everyone!
This is the last update of the Gitolite migration. It's a little more
detailed than previous updates, so I made it in a blog post:
https://blog.torproject.org/gitolite-gitlab-migration/
... which I attach a copy here if you're the kind of people who prefer
to read email than web. :)
Enjoy!
----
Tor has finally completed a long migration from legacy Git
infrastructure ([Gitolite and GitWeb][]) to our self-hosted
[GitLab][] server.
[GitLab]: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/tpa/team/-/wikis/howto/gitlab
[Gitolite and GitWeb]: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/tpa/team/-/wikis/howto/git
Git repository addresses have therefore changed. Many of you probably
have made the switch already, but if not, you will need to change:
https://git.torproject.org/
to:
https://gitlab.torproject.org/
In your Git configuration.
The [GitWeb front page][] is now an archived listing of all the
repositories before the migration. Inactive git repositories were
archived in GitLab [legacy/gitolite namespace][] and the
`gitweb.torproject.org` and `git.torproject.org` web sites now
redirect to GitLab.
[legacy/gitolite namespace]: https://gitlab.torproject.org/legacy/gitolite/
[GitWeb front page]: https://gitweb.torproject.org/
Best effort was made to reproduce the original gitolite repositories
faithfully and also avoid duplicating too much data in the
migration. But it's *possible* that some data present in Gitolite has
not migrated to GitLab.
User repositories are particularly at risk, because they were
massively migrated, and they were "re-forked" from their upstreams, to
avoid wasting disk space. If a user had a project with a matching name
it was *assumed* to have the right data, which might be inaccurate.
The two virtual machines responsible for the legacy service (`cupani`
for `git-rw.torproject.org` and `vineale` for `git.torproject.org` and
`gitweb.torproject.org`) have been shutdown. Their disks will remain
for 3 months (until the end of July 2024) and their backups for
another year after that (until the end of July 2025), after which
point all the data from those hosts will be destroyed, with only the
GitLab archives remaining.
The rest of this article expands on how this was done and what kind of
problems we faced during the migration.
# Where is the code?
Normally, nothing should be lost. All repositories in gitolite have
been either explicitly migrated by their owners, forcibly migrated by
the sysadmin team ([TPA][]), or explicitly destroyed at their owner's
request.
[TPA]: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/tpa/team/
An exhaustive [rewrite map][] translates gitolite projects to GitLab
projects. Some of those projects actually redirect to their *parent*
in cases of empty repositories that were obvious forks. Destroyed
repositories redirect to the GitLab front page.
[rewrite map]: https://archive.torproject.org/websites/gitolite2gitlab.txt
Because the migration happened progressively, it's technically
possible that commits pushed to gitolite were lost after the
migration. We took great care to avoid that scenario. First, we
adopted a proposal ([TPA-RFC-36][]) in June 2023 to announce the
transition. Then, in [March 2024][], we locked down all repositories
from any further changes. Around that time, only a [handful of
repositories][] had changes made after the adoption date, and we
examined each repository carefully to make sure nothing was lost.
[handful of repositories]: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/tpa/team/-/issues/41214#note_2983302 "handful of repositories"
[March 2024]: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/tpa/team/-/issues/41213
[TPA-RFC-36]: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/tpa/team/-/wikis/policy/tpa-rfc-36-gitoli…
Still, we built a [diff of all the changes in the git references][]
that archivists can peruse to check for data loss. It's large (6MiB+)
because a lot of repositories were migrated before the mass migration
and then kept evolving in GitLab. Many other repositories were rebuilt
in GitLab from parent to rebuild a fork relationship which added extra
references to those clones.
[diff of all the changes in the git references]: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/tpa/team/-/issues/41215#note_3023924
A note to amateur archivists out there, it's probably too late for one
last crawl now. The Git repositories now all redirect to GitLab and
are effectively unavailable in their original form.
That said, the GitWeb site was crawled into the [Internet Archive][] [in
February 2024][], so at least some copy of it is available in the
[Wayback Machine][]. At that point, however, many developers had already
migrated their projects to GitLab, so the copies there were already
possibly out of date compared with the repositories in GitLab.
[Wayback Machine]: https://web.archive.org/web/20240204162238/https://gitweb.torproject.org/
[in February 2024]: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/tpa/team/-/issues/41218#note_2992296
[Internet Archive]: https://archive.org/
[Software Heritage][] also has a copy of all repositories hosted on
Gitolite [since June 2023][] and have continuously kept mirroring the
repositories, where they will be kept hopefully in eternity. There's
an [issue][] where the main website can't find the repositories when
you search for `gitweb.torproject.org`, instead [search for
`git.torproject.org`][].
[search for `git.torproject.org`]: https://archive.softwareheritage.org/browse/search/?q=git.torproject.org&vi…
[issue]: https://gitlab.softwareheritage.org/swh/devel/swh-web/-/issues/4787
[since June 2023]: https://gitlab.softwareheritage.org/swh/infra/sysadm-environment/-/issues/4…
[Software Heritage]: https://www.softwareheritage.org/
In any case, if you believe data is missing, please do let us know by
[opening an issue with TPA][].
[opening an issue with TPA]: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/tpa/team/-/issues/new
# Why?
This is an old project in the making. The first [discussion about
migrating from gitolite to GitLab][] started in 2020 (almost 4 years
ago). But [going further back][], the first GitLab experiment was in
2016, almost a decade ago.
[going further back]: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/tpa/team/-/wikis/howto/trac#history
[discussion about migrating from gitolite to GitLab]: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/tpa/team/-/issues/40472
The current GitLab server dates from 2019, [replacing Trac for issue
tracking in 2020][]. It was originally supposed to host only mirrors
for merge requests and issue trackers but, naturally, one thing led to
another and eventually, GitLab had grown a container registry,
continuous integration (CI) runners, GitLab Pages, and, of course,
hosted most Git repositories.
[replacing Trac for issue tracking in 2020]: https://blog.torproject.org/from-trac-into-gitlab-for-tor/
There were hesitations at moving to GitLab for code hosting. We had
[discussions about the increased attack surface][] and [ways to
mitigate that][], but, ultimately, it seems the issues were not that
serious and the community embraced GitLab.
[ways to mitigate that]: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/tpa/gitlab/-/issues/98
[discussions about the increased attack surface]: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/tpa/gitlab/-/issues/81
TPA actually migrated its most critical repositories out of shared
hosting entirely, into specific servers (e.g. the Puppet Git
repository is just on the Puppet server now), leveraging Git's
decentralized nature and removing an entire attack surface from our
infrastructure. Some of those repositories are *mirrored* back into
GitLab, but the authoritative copy is not on GitLab.
In any case, the proposal to migrate from Gitolite to GitLab was
effectively just formalizing a *fait accompli*.
# How to migrate from Gitolite / cgit to GitLab
The progressive migration was a challenge. If you intend to migrate
between hosting platforms, we strongly recommend to make a "flag day"
during which you migrate *all* repositories *at once*. This ensures a
smoother transition and avoids elaborate rewrite rules.
When Gitolite access was shutdown, we had repositories on both GitLab
and Gitolite, without a clear relationship between the two. A priori,
the plan then was to import all the remaining Gitolite repositories
into the `legacy/gitolite` namespace, but that seemed wasteful,
particularly for large repositories like [Tor Browser][] which uses
nearly a gigabyte of disk space. So we took special care to avoid
duplicating repositories.
[Tor Browser]: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/applications/tor-browser
When the [mass migration][] started, only 71 of the 538 Gitolite
repositories were `Migrated to GitLab` in the `gitolite.conf`
file. So, given that we had *hundreds* of repositories to migrate:, we
developed some automation to "[save time][]". We already automate
similar ad-hoc tasks with [Fabric][], so we used that framework here
as well. (Our normal configuration management tool is [Puppet][],
which is a poor fit here.)
[Puppet]: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/tpa/team/-/wikis/howto/puppet
[Fabric]: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/tpa/team/-/wikis/howto/fabric/
[save time]: https://xkcd.com/1205/
[mass migration]: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/tpa/team/-/issues/41215
So a relatively [large amount of Python code][] was produced to
basically do the following:
[large amount of Python code]: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/tpa/fabric-tasks/-/blob/85121b4a8a293cebb…
1. check if all on-disk repositories are listed in `gitolite.conf`
(and vice versa) and either add missing repositories or delete
them from disk if garbage
2. for each repository in `gitolite.conf`, if its category is marked
`Migrated to GitLab`, skip, otherwise;
3. find a matching GitLab project by name, prompt the user for
multiple matches
4. if a match is found, redirect if the repository is non-empty
* we have GitLab projects that *look* like the real thing, but are
only present to host migrated Trac issues
* in such cases we cloned the Gitolite project locally and pushed
to the existing repository instead
5. otherwise, a new repository is created in the `legacy/gitolite`
namespace, using the "import" mechanism in GitLab to automatically
import the repository from Gitolite, creating redirections and
updating `gitolite.conf` to document the change
User repositories (those under the `user/` directory in Gitolite) were
handled specially. First, the existing redirection map was checked to
see if a similarly named project was migrated (so that,
e.g. `user/dgoulet/tor` is properly treated as a fork of
`tpo/core/tor`). Then the parent project was forked in GitLab and the
Gitolite project force-pushed to the fork. This allows us to show the
fork relationship in GitLab and, more importantly, benefit from the
"pool" feature in GitLab which deduplicates disk usage between forks.
Sometimes, we found no such relationships. Then we simply imported
multiple repositories with similar names in the `legacy/gitolite`
namespace, sometimes creating forks between user repositories, on a
first-come-first-served basis from the `gitolite.conf` order.
The code used in this migration is now available publicly. We
encourage other groups planning to migrate from Gitolite/GitWeb to
GitLab to use (and contribute to) our [fabric-tasks][] repository,
even though it does have its fair share of hard-coded assertions.
[fabric-tasks]: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/tpa/fabric-tasks/
The main entry point is the `gitolite.mass-repos-migration` task. A
typical migration job looked like:
```
anarcat@angela:fabric-tasks$ fab -H cupani.torproject.org gitolite.mass-repos-migration
[...]
INFO: skipping project project/help/infra in category Migrated to GitLab
INFO: skipping project project/help/wiki in category Migrated to GitLab
INFO: skipping project project/jenkins/jobs in category Migrated to GitLab
INFO: skipping project project/jenkins/tools in category Migrated to GitLab
INFO: searching for projects matching fastlane
INFO: Successfully connected to https://gitlab.torproject.org
import gitolite project project/tor-browser/fastlane into gitlab legacy/gitolite/project/tor-browser/fastlane with desc 'Tor Browser app store and deployment configuration for Fastlane'? [Y/n]
INFO: importing gitolite project project/tor-browser/fastlane into gitlab legacy/gitolite/project/tor-browser/fastlane with desc 'Tor Browser app store and deployment configuration for Fastlane'
INFO: building a new connect to cupani
INFO: defaulting name to fastlane
INFO: importing project into GitLab
INFO: Successfully connected to https://gitlab.torproject.org
INFO: loading group legacy/gitolite/project/tor-browser
INFO: archiving project
INFO: creating repository fastlane (fastlane) in namespace legacy/gitolite/project/tor-browser from https://git.torproject.org/project/tor-browser/fastlane into https://gitlab.torproject.org/legacy/gitolite/project/tor-browser/fastlane
INFO: migrating Gitolite repository project/tor-browser/fastlane to GitLab project legacy/gitolite/project/tor-browser/fastlane
INFO: uploading 399 bytes to /srv/git.torproject.org/repositories/project/tor-browser/fastlane.git/hooks/pre-receive
INFO: making /srv/git.torproject.org/repositories/project/tor-browser/fastlane.git/hooks/pre-receive executable
INFO: adding entry to rewrite_map /home/anarcat/src/tor/tor-puppet/modules/profile/files/git/gitolite2gitlab.txt
INFO: modifying gitolite.conf to add: "config gitweb.category = Migrated to GitLab"
INFO: rewriting gitolite config /home/anarcat/src/tor/gitolite-admin/conf/gitolite.conf to change project project/tor-browser/fastlane to category Migrated to GitLab
INFO: skipping project project/bridges/bridgedb-admin in category Migrated to GitLab
[...]
```
In the above, you can see migrated repositories skipped then the
[fastlane project][] being archived into GitLab. Another example with
a later version of the script, processing only user repositories and
showing the interactive prompt and a force-push into a fork:
[fastlane project]: https://gitlab.torproject.org/legacy/gitolite/project/tor-browser/fastlane
```
$ fab -H cupani.torproject.org gitolite.mass-repos-migration --include 'user/.*' --exclude '.*tor-?browser.*'
INFO: skipping project user/aagbsn/bridgedb in category Migrated to GitLab
[...]
INFO: skipping project user/phw/atlas in category Migrated to GitLab
INFO: processing project user/phw/obfsproxy (Philipp's obfsproxy repository) in category Users' development repositories (Attic)
INFO: Successfully connected to https://gitlab.torproject.org
INFO: user repository detected, trying to find fork phw/obfsproxy
WARNING: no existing fork found, entering user fork subroutine
INFO: found 6 GitLab projects matching 'obfsproxy' (https://gitweb.torproject.org/user/phw/obfsproxy.git)
0 legacy/gitolite/debian/obfsproxy
1 legacy/gitolite/debian/obfsproxy-legacy
2 legacy/gitolite/user/asn/obfsproxy
3 legacy/gitolite/user/ioerror/obfsproxy
4 tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/obfsproxy
5 tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/obfsproxy-legacy
select parent to fork from, or enter to abort: ^G4
INFO: repository is not empty: in-pack: 2104, packs: 1, size-pack: 414
fork project tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/obfsproxy into legacy/gitolite/user/phw/obfsproxy^G [Y/n]
INFO: loading project tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/obfsproxy
INFO: forking project user/phw/obfsproxy into namespace legacy/gitolite/user/phw
INFO: waiting for fork to complete...
INFO: fork status: started, sleeping...
INFO: fork finished
INFO: cloning and force pushing from user/phw/obfsproxy to legacy/gitolite/user/phw/obfsproxy
INFO: deleting branch protection: <class 'gitlab.v4.objects.branches.ProjectProtectedBranch'> => {'id': 2723, 'name': 'master', 'push_access_levels': [{'id': 2864, 'access_level': 40, 'access_level_description': 'Maintainers', 'deploy_key_id': None}], 'merge_access_levels': [{'id': 2753, 'access_level': 40, 'access_level_description': 'Maintainers'}], 'allow_force_push': False}
INFO: cloning repository git-rw.torproject.org:/srv/git.torproject.org/repositories/user/phw/obfspro… in /tmp/tmp6orvjggy/user/phw/obfsproxy
Cloning into bare repository '/tmp/tmp6orvjggy/user/phw/obfsproxy'...
INFO: pushing to GitLab: https://gitlab.torproject.org/legacy/gitolite/user/phw/obfsproxy
remote:
remote: To create a merge request for bug_10887, visit:
remote: https://gitlab.torproject.org/legacy/gitolite/user/phw/obfsproxy/-/merge_re…
remote:
[...]
To ssh://gitlab.torproject.org/legacy/gitolite/user/phw/obfsproxy
+ 2bf9d09...a8e54d5 master -> master (forced update)
* [new branch] bug_10887 -> bug_10887
[...]
INFO: migrating repo
INFO: migrating Gitolite repository https://gitweb.torproject.org/user/phw/obfsproxy.git to GitLab project https://gitlab.torproject.org/legacy/gitolite/user/phw/obfsproxy
INFO: adding entry to rewrite_map /home/anarcat/src/tor/tor-puppet/modules/profile/files/git/gitolite2gitlab.txt
INFO: modifying gitolite.conf to add: "config gitweb.category = Migrated to GitLab"
INFO: rewriting gitolite config /home/anarcat/src/tor/gitolite-admin/conf/gitolite.conf to change project user/phw/obfsproxy to category Migrated to GitLab
INFO: processing project user/phw/scramblesuit (Philipp's ScrambleSuit repository) in category Users' development repositories (Attic)
INFO: user repository detected, trying to find fork phw/scramblesuit
WARNING: no existing fork found, entering user fork subroutine
WARNING: no matching gitlab project found for user/phw/scramblesuit
INFO: user fork subroutine failed, resuming normal procedure
INFO: searching for projects matching scramblesuit
import gitolite project user/phw/scramblesuit into gitlab legacy/gitolite/user/phw/scramblesuit with desc 'Philipp's ScrambleSuit repository'?^G [Y/n]
INFO: checking if remote repo https://git.torproject.org/user/phw/scramblesuit exists
INFO: importing gitolite project user/phw/scramblesuit into gitlab legacy/gitolite/user/phw/scramblesuit with desc 'Philipp's ScrambleSuit repository'
INFO: importing project into GitLab
INFO: Successfully connected to https://gitlab.torproject.org
INFO: loading group legacy/gitolite/user/phw
INFO: creating repository scramblesuit (scramblesuit) in namespace legacy/gitolite/user/phw from https://git.torproject.org/user/phw/scramblesuit into https://gitlab.torproject.org/legacy/gitolite/user/phw/scramblesuit
INFO: archiving project
INFO: migrating Gitolite repository https://gitweb.torproject.org/user/phw/scramblesuit.git to GitLab project https://gitlab.torproject.org/legacy/gitolite/user/phw/scramblesuit
INFO: adding entry to rewrite_map /home/anarcat/src/tor/tor-puppet/modules/profile/files/git/gitolite2gitlab.txt
INFO: modifying gitolite.conf to add: "config gitweb.category = Migrated to GitLab"
INFO: rewriting gitolite config /home/anarcat/src/tor/gitolite-admin/conf/gitolite.conf to change project user/phw/scramblesuit to category Migrated to GitLab
[...]
```
Acute eyes will notice the [bell used as a notification mechanism][]
as well in this transcript.
[bell used as a notification mechanism]: https://anarc.at/blog/2022-11-08-modern-bell-urgency/
A lot of the code is now useless for us, but some, like "commit and
push" or [`is-repo-empty`][] live on in the [git module][] and, of
course, the [gitlab module][] has grown some legs along the
way. We've also found fun bugs, like a [file descriptor exhaustion in
bash][], among other oddities. The [retirement milestone][] and
[issue 41215][] has a detailed log of the migration, for those
curious.
[issue 41215]: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/tpa/team/-/issues/41215
[retirement milestone]: https://gitlab.torproject.org/groups/tpo/tpa/-/milestones/11#tab-issues
[file descriptor exhaustion in bash]: https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=642504
[gitlab module]: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/tpa/fabric-tasks/-/blob/85121b4a8a293cebb…
[git module]: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/tpa/fabric-tasks/-/blob/85121b4a8a293cebb…
[`is-repo-empty`]: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/tpa/fabric-tasks/-/blob/85121b4a8a293cebb…
This was a challenging project, but it feels nice to have this behind
us. This gets rid of 2 of the 4 remaining machines running Debian
"old-old-stable", which moves a bit further ahead in our late
[bullseye upgrades milestone][].
[bullseye upgrades milestone]: https://gitlab.torproject.org/groups/tpo/tpa/-/milestones/5#tab-issues
Full transparency: we tested GPT-3.5, GPT-4, and other large language
models to see if they could answer the question "write a set of
rewrite rules to redirect GitWeb to GitLab". This has become a
standard LLM test for your faithful writer to figure out how good a
LLM is at technical responses. None of them gave an accurate,
complete, and functional response, for the record.
The actual rewrite rules as of this writing follow, for humans that
actually like working answers provided by expert humans instead of
artificial intelligence which currently seem to be, glorified,
mansplaining interns.
## git.torproject.org rewrite rules
Those rules are relatively simple in that they rewrite a single URL to
its equivalent GitLab counterpart in a 1:1 fashion. It relies on the
[rewrite map][] mentioned above, of course.
[rewrite map]: https://archive.torproject.org/websites/gitolite2gitlab.txt
```
RewriteEngine on
# this RewriteMap connects the gitweb projects to their GitLab
# equivalent
RewriteMap gitolite2gitlab "txt:/etc/apache2/gitolite2gitlab.txt"
# if this becomes a performance bottleneck, convert to a DBM map with:
#
# $ httxt2dbm -i mapfile.txt -o mapfile.map
#
# and:
#
# RewriteMap mapname "dbm:/etc/apache/mapfile.map"
#
# according to reports lavamind found online, we hit such a
# performance bottleneck only around millions of entries, which is not our case
# those two rules can go away once all the projects are
# migrated to GitLab
#
# this matches the request URI so we can check the RewriteMap
# for a match next
#
# WARNING: this won't match URLs without .git in them, which
# *do* work now. one possibility would be to match the request
# URI (without query string!) with:
#
# /git/(.*)(.git)?/(((branches|hooks|info|objects/).*)|git-.*|upload-pack|receive-pack|HEAD|config|description)?.
#
# I haven't been able to figure out the actual structure of
# those URLs, so it's really hard to figure out the boundaries
# of the project name here. I stopped after pouring around the
# http-backend.c code in git
# itself. https://www.git-scm.com/docs/http-protocol is also
# kind of incomplete and unsatisfying.
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^/(git/)?(.*).git/.*$
# this makes the RewriteRule match only if there's a match in
# the rewrite map
RewriteCond ${gitolite2gitlab:%2|NOT_FOUND} !NOT_FOUND
RewriteRule ^/(git/)?(.*).git/(.*)$ https://gitlab.torproject.org/${gitolite2gitlab:$2}.git/$3 [R=302,L]
# Fallback everything else to GitLab
RewriteRule (.*) https://gitlab.torproject.org [R=302,L]
```
## gitweb.torproject.org rewrite rules
Those are the vastly more complicated GitWeb to GitLab rewrite
rules.
Note that we say "GitWeb" but we were actually *not* running
[GitWeb][] but [cgit][], as the former didn't actually scale for us.
[cgit]: https://git.zx2c4.com/cgit/
[GitWeb]: https://git-scm.com/docs/gitweb
```
RewriteEngine on
# this RewriteMap connects the gitweb projects to their GitLab
# equivalent
RewriteMap gitolite2gitlab "txt:/etc/apache2/gitolite2gitlab.txt"
# special rule to process targets of the old spec.tpo site and
# bring them to the right redirect on the new spec.tpo site. that should turn, for example:
#
# https://gitweb.torproject.org/torspec.git/tree/address-spec.txt
#
# into:
#
# https://spec.torproject.org/address-spec
RewriteRule ^/torspec.git/tree/(.*).txt$ https://spec.torproject.org/$1 [R=302]
# list of endpoints taken from cgit's cmd.c
# those two RewriteCond are necessary because we don't move
# all repositories at once. once the migration is completed,
# they can be removed.
#
# and yes, they are copied all over the place below
#
# create a match for the project name to check if the project
# has been moved to GitLab
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^/(.*).git(/.*)?$
# this makes the RewriteRule match only if there's a match in
# the rewrite map
RewriteCond ${gitolite2gitlab:%1|NOT_FOUND} !NOT_FOUND
# main project page, like summary below
RewriteRule ^/(.*).git/?$ https://gitlab.torproject.org/${gitolite2gitlab:$1}/ [R=302,L]
# summary
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^/(.*).git/.*$
RewriteCond ${gitolite2gitlab:%1|NOT_FOUND} !NOT_FOUND
RewriteRule ^/(.*).git/summary/?$ https://gitlab.torproject.org/${gitolite2gitlab:$1}/ [R=302,L]
# about
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^/(.*).git/.*$
RewriteCond ${gitolite2gitlab:%1|NOT_FOUND} !NOT_FOUND
RewriteRule ^/(.*).git/about/?$ https://gitlab.torproject.org/${gitolite2gitlab:$1}/ [R=302,L]
# commit
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^/(.*).git/.*$
RewriteCond ${gitolite2gitlab:%1|NOT_FOUND} !NOT_FOUND
RewriteCond "%{QUERY_STRING}" "(.*(?:^|&))id=([^&]*)(&.*)?$"
RewriteRule ^/(.*).git/commit/? https://gitlab.torproject.org/${gitolite2gitlab:$1}/-/commit/%2 [R=302,L,QSD]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^/(.*).git/.*$
RewriteCond ${gitolite2gitlab:%1|NOT_FOUND} !NOT_FOUND
RewriteRule ^/(.*).git/commit/? https://gitlab.torproject.org/${gitolite2gitlab:$1}/-/commits/HEAD [R=302,L]
# diff, incomplete because can diff arbitrary refs and files in cgit but not in GitLab, hard to parse
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^/(.*).git/.*$
RewriteCond ${gitolite2gitlab:%1|NOT_FOUND} !NOT_FOUND
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} id=([^&]*)
RewriteRule ^/(.*).git/diff/? https://gitlab.torproject.org/${gitolite2gitlab:$1}/-/commit/%1 [R=302,L,QSD]
# patch
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^/(.*).git/.*$
RewriteCond ${gitolite2gitlab:%1|NOT_FOUND} !NOT_FOUND
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} id=([^&]*)
RewriteRule ^/(.*).git/patch/? https://gitlab.torproject.org/${gitolite2gitlab:$1}/-/commit/%1.patch [R=302,L,QSD]
# rawdiff, incomplete because can show only one file diff, which GitLab cannot
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^/(.*).git/.*$
RewriteCond ${gitolite2gitlab:%1|NOT_FOUND} !NOT_FOUND
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} id=([^&]*)
RewriteRule ^/(.*).git/rawdiff/?$ https://gitlab.torproject.org/${gitolite2gitlab:$1}/-/commit/%1.diff [R=302,L,QSD]
# log
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^/(.*).git/.*$
RewriteCond ${gitolite2gitlab:%1|NOT_FOUND} !NOT_FOUND
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} h=([^&]*)
RewriteRule ^/(.*).git/log/?$ https://gitlab.torproject.org/${gitolite2gitlab:$1}/-/commits/%1 [R=302,L,QSD]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^/(.*).git/.*$
RewriteCond ${gitolite2gitlab:%1|NOT_FOUND} !NOT_FOUND
RewriteRule ^/(.*).git/log/?$ https://gitlab.torproject.org/${gitolite2gitlab:$1}/-/commits/HEAD [R=302,L]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^/(.*).git/.*$
RewriteCond ${gitolite2gitlab:%1|NOT_FOUND} !NOT_FOUND
RewriteRule ^/(.*).git/log(/?.*)$ https://gitlab.torproject.org/${gitolite2gitlab:$1}/-/commits/HEAD$2 [R=302,L]
# atom
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^/(.*).git/.*$
RewriteCond ${gitolite2gitlab:%1|NOT_FOUND} !NOT_FOUND
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} h=([^&]*)
RewriteRule ^/(.*).git/atom/?$ https://gitlab.torproject.org/${gitolite2gitlab:$1}/-/commits/%1 [R=302,L,QSD]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^/(.*).git/.*$
RewriteCond ${gitolite2gitlab:%1|NOT_FOUND} !NOT_FOUND
RewriteRule ^/(.*).git/atom/?$ https://gitlab.torproject.org/${gitolite2gitlab:$1}/-/commits/HEAD [R=302,L,QSD]
# refs, incomplete because two pages in GitLab, defaulting to "tags"
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^/(.*).git/.*$
RewriteCond ${gitolite2gitlab:%1|NOT_FOUND} !NOT_FOUND
RewriteRule ^/(.*).git/refs/?$ https://gitlab.torproject.org/${gitolite2gitlab:$1}/-/tags [R=302,L]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^/(.*).git/.*$
RewriteCond ${gitolite2gitlab:%1|NOT_FOUND} !NOT_FOUND
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} h=([^&]*)
RewriteRule ^/(.*).git/tag/? https://gitlab.torproject.org/${gitolite2gitlab:$1}/-/tags/%1 [R=302,L,QSD]
# tree
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^/(.*).git/.*$
RewriteCond ${gitolite2gitlab:%1|NOT_FOUND} !NOT_FOUND
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} id=([^&]*)
RewriteRule ^/(.*).git/tree(/?.*)$ https://gitlab.torproject.org/${gitolite2gitlab:$1}/-/tree/%1$2 [R=302,L,QSD]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^/(.*).git/.*$
RewriteCond ${gitolite2gitlab:%1|NOT_FOUND} !NOT_FOUND
RewriteRule ^/(.*).git/tree(/?.*)$ https://gitlab.torproject.org/${gitolite2gitlab:$1}/-/tree/HEAD$2 [R=302,L]
# /-/tree has no good default in GitLab, revert to HEAD which is a good
# approximation (we can't assume "master" here anymore)
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^/(.*).git/.*$
RewriteCond ${gitolite2gitlab:%1|NOT_FOUND} !NOT_FOUND
RewriteRule ^/(.*).git/tree/?$ https://gitlab.torproject.org/${gitolite2gitlab:$1}/-/tree/HEAD [R=302,L]
# plain
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^/(.*).git/.*$
RewriteCond ${gitolite2gitlab:%1|NOT_FOUND} !NOT_FOUND
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} h=([^&]*)
RewriteRule ^/(.*).git/plain(/?.*)$ https://gitlab.torproject.org/${gitolite2gitlab:$1}/-/raw/%1$2 [R=302,L,QSD]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^/(.*).git/.*$
RewriteCond ${gitolite2gitlab:%1|NOT_FOUND} !NOT_FOUND
RewriteRule ^/(.*).git/plain(/?.*)$ https://gitlab.torproject.org/${gitolite2gitlab:$1}/-/raw/HEAD$2 [R=302,L]
# blame: disabled
#RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^/(.*).git/.*$
#RewriteCond ${gitolite2gitlab:%1|NOT_FOUND} !NOT_FOUND
#RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} h=([^&]*)
#RewriteRule ^/(.*).git/blame(/?.*)$ https://gitlab.torproject.org/${gitolite2gitlab:$1}/-/blame/%1$2 [R=302,L,QSD]
# same default as tree above
#RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^/(.*).git/.*$
#RewriteCond ${gitolite2gitlab:%1|NOT_FOUND} !NOT_FOUND
#RewriteRule ^/(.*).git/blame(/?.*)$ https://gitlab.torproject.org/${gitolite2gitlab:$1}/-/blame/HEAD/$2 [R=302,L]
# stats
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^/(.*).git/.*$
RewriteCond ${gitolite2gitlab:%1|NOT_FOUND} !NOT_FOUND
RewriteRule ^/(.*).git/stats/?$ https://gitlab.torproject.org/${gitolite2gitlab:$1}/-/graphs/HEAD [R=302,L]
# still TODO:
# repolist: once migration is complete
#
# cannot be done:
# atom: needs a feed token, user must be logged in
# blob: no direct equivalent
# info: not working on main cgit website?
# ls_cache: not working, irrelevant?
# objects: undocumented?
# snapshot: pattern too hard to match on cgit's side
# special case, we keep a copy of the main index on the archive
RewriteRule ^/?$ https://archive.torproject.org/websites/gitweb.torproject.org.html [R=302,L]
# Fallback: everything else to GitLab
RewriteRule .* https://gitlab.torproject.org [R=302,L]
```
The reference copy of those is available in our (currently private)
Puppet git repository.
--
Antoine Beaupré
torproject.org system administration
Hi everyone!
Here is my status report for April 2024.
This month, I explored the automation possibilities I mentioned last month.
I wrote a script [0] that automatically rebases a few branches on top of
gecko-dev/esr115 [1], cherry-picks commits from our default+maintenance
branches, and moves them to the appropriate position of the patchset.
In this way, when Mozilla tags a new release, our new branches will be
ready without us doing anything.
I'm still testing that everything works as expected, so I'm running the
script manually. But the following step would be to run it automatically
and regularly.
Also, we could modify it to send us a notification when a new Firefox
tag is published.
I also wrote a script to automate release preparations [2], but it's
still under review.
This script will check for new releases of our dependencies and update
our build configuration and changelogs automatically.
We already had a script to create changelogs from linked GitLab issues,
but we had to add updates manually. This, and a few other details, will
be automated by the script, too.
Then, I addressed the various comments on the MR to improve error
handling in the TorConnect module [3] I mentioned in my previous report.
In addition, I started working on Mullvad Browser's Windows installer
[4] again. sajolida has prepared some wireframes on how to structure it,
and I tried to check what's possible with NSIS.
I helped with the releases for this month. I rebased both the release
and the alpha channel and backported some fixes from alpha to stable.
I'm also continuing my efforts to keep a branch on top of Firefox's
rapid release and to (slowly but steadily) address fingerprinting
issues. And since the next Firefox ESR (128) is going to be nightly in a
couple of weeks [5], I restarted my uplift effort [6] as well.
Finally, I made some quick fixes: a fallback mechanism to show the
circuit display also when the bridge lines don't have a fingerprint
(e.g., with conjure) [7], a patch for our Japanese localization that
only partially worked on macOS [8], and more.
Best,
Pier
[0]
https://gitlab.torproject.org/pierov/lazy-scripts/-/blob/main/rebase-tool/r…
[1] https://github.com/mozilla/gecko-dev/tree/esr115
[2]
https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/applications/tor-browser-build/-/merge_re…
[3]
https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/applications/tor-browser/-/merge_requests…
[4]
https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/applications/mullvad-browser/-/issues/200
[5] https://whattrainisitnow.com/release/?version=128
[6]
https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/applications/tor-browser/-/issues/40789#n…
[7]
https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/applications/tor-browser/-/merge_requests…
[8]
https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/applications/tor-browser/-/issues/42535
Hi everyone!
We have a new job opening for a Network Health Engineer!
https://www.torproject.org/about/jobs/network-health/
If you are or know someone who would be a good fit and wants to join our
team, please apply/share.
Have a great week and thanks for helping us spread the word! 🙂
Best,
Tyler
Hey everyone!
Here are our meeting logs:
http://meetbot.debian.net/tor-meeting/2024/tor-meeting.2024-04-25-16.15.html
And our meeting pad:
Anti-censorship work meeting pad
--------------------------------
Anti-censorship
--------------------------------
Next meeting: Thursday, May 2 16:00 UTC
Facilitator: meskio
^^^(See Facilitator Queue at tail)
Weekly meetings, every Thursday at 16:00 UTC, in #tor-meeting at OFTC
(channel is logged while meetings are in progress)
This week's Facilitator: onyinyang
== Goal of this meeting ==
Weekly check-in about the status of anti-censorship work at Tor.
Coordinate collaboration between people/teams on anti-censorship at the
Tor Project and Tor community.
== Links to Useful documents ==
* Our anti-censorship roadmap:
*
Roadmap:https://gitlab.torproject.org/groups/tpo/anti-censorship/-/boards
* The anti-censorship team's wiki page:
*
https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/team/-/wikis/home
* Past meeting notes can be found at:
* https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-project/
* Tickets that need reviews: from sponsors, we are working on:
* All needs review tickets:
*
https://gitlab.torproject.org/groups/tpo/anti-censorship/-/merge_requests?s…
* Sponsor 96 <-- meskio, shell, onyinyang, cohosh
* https://gitlab.torproject.org/groups/tpo/-/milestones/24
* Sponsor 150 <-- meskio working on it
*
https://gitlab.torproject.org/groups/tpo/anti-censorship/-/issues/?label_na…
== Announcements ==
== Discussion ==
* What is the current repo for the snowflake website?
* https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/web/snowflake
*
https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snow…
* is in the process to be moved to tpo/web but not sure if it
has already being moved
* Snowflake Performance Improvement:
*
https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snow…
* There is possible alternative design that would reduce
complexity, should we do it?
https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snow…
== Actions ==
== Interesting links ==
* Maybe already known, Brave Browser has a snowflake proxy feature
(since 2023) https://github.com/brave/brave-browser/issues/25315
== Reading group ==
* We will discuss "" on
*
* Questions to ask and goals to have:
* What aspects of the paper are questionable?
* Are there immediate actions we can take based on this work?
* Are there long-term actions we can take based on this work?
* Is there future work that we want to call out in hopes
that others will pick it up?
== Updates ==
Name:
This week:
- What you worked on this week.
Next week:
- What you are planning to work on next week.
Help with:
- Something you need help with.
cecylia (cohosh): 2024-04-25
Last week:
- worked on Lox integration testing
- released a new version of the snowflake addon
-
https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snow…
This week:
- follow up on reported SQS errors
- update wasm-bindgen fork to fix some bugs and hopefully
upstream changes
- create a Lox test environment and instructions for the
browser team
-
https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/applications/tor-browser/-/issues/42503
Needs help with:
dcf: 2024-04-25
Last week:
- posted and briefly summarized the paper "Snowflake Anonymous
Network Traffic Identification"
https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/anti-censorship-team/2024-April/0003…https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snow…
Next week:
- open issue to have snowflake-client log whenever KCPInErrors
is nonzero
https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snow…
- parent:
https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snow…
- open issue to disable /debug endpoint on snowflake broker
- move snowflake-02 to new VM
Help with:
meskio: 2023-04-25
Last week:
- bridgestrap not publishing collector metrics (bridgestrap#199)
- WIP of the email distributor in rdsys (rdsys#186)
- document the bridge distribution mechanisms in rdsys to
replace bridges.tpo/info (rdsys#137)
Next week:
- email distributor in rdsys (rdsys#186)
Shelikhoo: 2024-04-18
Last Week:
- [Merge Request WIP] Add Container Image Mirroring from Tor
Gitlab to Docker
Hub(https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/…
- [Merge Request Done] Rename Stable Container Tags to Latest
https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snow…
- [Fixed!] Investigate broken debian-testing pipeline for
snowflake(Remove apt install lbzip2 to avoid broken dependencies:
https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snow…)
- Merge request reviews
Next Week/TODO:
- Revise Snowflake Performance Improvement MR
- Merge request reviews
onyinyang: 2023-04-25
Last week(s):
- Responding to pre-existing MR reviews and other
notifications/questions in gitlab
This week:
- Responding to pre-existing MR reviews and other
notifications/questions in gitlab
Probably next week and beyond:
- preparing for upcoming panel (maybe)
- implement some preliminary user feedback mechanism to
identify bridge blocking based on Vecna's work
- improve metrics collection/think about how to show Lox is
working/valuable
- sketch out Lox blog post/usage notes for forum
- attempt hyper upgrade again and tokio upgrade
(long term things were discussed at the meeting!):
https://pad.riseup.net/p/tor-ac-community-azaleas-room-keep
- brainstorming grouping strategies for Lox buckets (of
bridges) and gathering context on how types of bridges are
distributed/use in practice
Question: What makes a bridge usable for a given user, and
how can we encode that to best ensure we're getting the most appropriate
resources to people?
1. Are there some obvious grouping strategies that we
can already consider?
e.g., by PT, by bandwidth (lower bandwidth bridges
sacrificed to open-invitation buckets?), by locale (to be matched with a
requesting user's geoip or something?)
2. Does it make sense to group 3 bridges/bucket, so
trusted users have access to 3 bridges (and untrusted users have access
to 1)? More? Less?
theodorsm: 2023-04-18
Last weeks:
- Extended Pion dtls library to support hooking of client
hellos (PR: https://github.com/pion/dtls/pull/631). Fingerprint
generation of firefox and chrome + mimicking using the client hello hook
have been moved to its own repo: https://github.com/theodorsm/covertDTLS
- Gave some comments on the recent"Snowflake Anonymous
Network Traffic Identification" paper:
https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snow….
Next weeks:
- Add hook to pion/webrtc so it can be used in snowflake.
- Test and validate mimicked client hello with snowflake.
- Add randomized fingerprint
- Analyze the snowflake captures done in "Snowflake
Anonymous Network Traffic Identification" paper.
Help with:
Facilitator Queue:
meskio shelikhoo onyinyang
1. First available staff in the Facilitator Queue will be the
facilitator for the meeting
2. After facilitating the meeting, the facilitator will be moved to the
tail of the queue
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onyinyang
GPG Fingerprint 3CC3 F8CC E9D0 A92F A108 38EF 156A 6435 430C 2036
Hello everyone,
We have a new job opening for a Grants Coordinator! https://www.torproject.org/about/jobs/grants-coordinator/
If you are or know someone who would be a good fit and wants to join our team, please apply/share. Thanks! :)
Cheers,
Erin