Start a changelog for 0.4.6.1-alpha

Changes in version 0.4.6.1-alpha - 2021-03-??

  Tor 0.4.6.1-alpha is the first alpha release in the 0.4.6.x series. It

  improves client circuit performance, adds missing features, and

  improves some of our DoS handling and statistics reporting. It also

  includes numerous smaller bugfixes.

  o Major features (control port, onion services):

    - Add controller support for creating version 3 onion services with

      client authorization. Previously, only v2 onion services could be

      created with client authorization. Closes ticket 40084. Patch by

      Neel Chauhan.

  o Major features (directory authorityl):

    - When voting for a relay with a Sybil-like appearance, add the

      Sybil flag when clearing out the other flags. This lets a relay

      operator know why their relay hasn't been voted on. Closes ticket

      40255. Patch by Neel Chauhan.

  o Major features (relay, denial of service):

    - Add a new DoS subsystem feature to control the rate of client

      connections for relays. Closes ticket 40253.

  o Major features (statistics):

    - Relays now also publish statistics about the number of v3 onion

      services and volume of v3 onion service traffic, in the same

      manner they already do for v2 onions. Closes ticket 23126.

  o Major bugfixes (circuit build timeout):

    - Improve the accuracy of our circuit build timeout calculation for

      60%, 70%, and 80% build rates for various guard choices. We now

      use a maximum likelihood estimator for Pareto parameters of the

      circuit build time distribution, instead of a "right-censored

      estimator". This causes clients to ignore circuits that never

      finish building in their timeout calculations. Previously, clients

      were counting such unfinished circuits as having the highest

      possible build time value, when in reality these circuits most

      likely just contain relays that are offline. We also now wait a

      bit longer to let circuits complete for measurement purposes,

      lower the minimum possible effective timeout from 1.5 seconds to

      10ms, and increase the resolution of the circuit build time

      histogram from 50ms bin widths to 10ms bin widths. Additionally,

      we alter our estimate Xm by taking the maximum of the top 10 most

      common build time values of the 10ms histogram, and compute Xm as

      the average of these. Fixes bug 40168; bugfix on 0.2.2.14-alpha.

    - Remove max_time calculation and associated warn from circuit build

      timeout 'alpha' parameter estimation, as this is no longer needed

      by our new estimator from 40168. Fixes bug 34088; bugfix

      on 0.2.2.9-alpha.

  o Major bugfixes (signing key):

    - In the tor-gencert utility, give an informative error message if

      the passphrase given in `--create-identity-key` is too short.

      Fixes bug 40189; bugfix on 0.2.0.1-alpha. Patch by Neel Chauhan.

  o Minor features (bridge):

    - We now announce the URL to Tor's new bridge status at

      https://bridges.torproject.org/ when Tor is configured to run as a

      bridge relay. Closes ticket 30477.

  o Minor features (build system):

    - New "make lsp" command to auto generate the compile_commands.json

      file used by the ccls server. The "bear" program is needed for

      this. Closes ticket 40227.

  o Minor features (command-line interface):

    - Add build informations to `tor --version` in order to ease

      reproducible builds. Closes ticket 32102.

    - When parsing command-line flags that take an optional argument,

      treat the argument as absent if it would start with a '-'

      character. Arguments in that form are not intelligible for any of

      our optional-argument flags. Closes ticket 40223.

    - Allow a relay operator to list the ed25519 keys on the command

      line by adding the `rsa` and `ed25519` arguments to the

      --list-fingerprint flag to show the respective RSA and ed25519

      relay fingerprint. Closes ticket 33632. Patch by Neel Chauhan.

  o Minor features (control port, stream handling):

    - Add the stream ID argument to the event line in the ADDRMAP

      control event. Closes ticket 40249. Patch by Neel Chauhan.

  o Minor features (logging):

    - Change the DoS subsystem heartbeat line format so be more clear on

      what has been detected/rejected and which option is disabled if

      any. Closes ticket 40308.

    - In src/core/mainloop/mainloop.c and src/core/mainloop/connection.c,

      put brackets around IPv6 addresses in log messages. Closes ticket

      40232. Patch by Neel Chauhan.

  o Minor features (performance, windows):

    - Use SRWLocks to implement locking on Windows. Replaces the

      critical section locking implementation with the faster SRWLocks

      available since Windows Vista. Closes ticket 17927. Patch by

      Daniel Pinto.

  o Minor features (protocol, proxy support, defense in depth):

    - Close HAProxy connections if they somehow manage to send us data

      before we start reading. Closes another case of ticket 40017.

  o Minor features (tests, portability):

    - Port the hs_build_address.py test script to work with recent

      versions of python. Closes ticket 40213. Patch from

      Samanta Navarro.

  o Minor bugfixes (build):

    - Mini-report in the configure script now shows whether or not lzma

      and zstd have been used, not just if enable flag passed in. Fixes

      bug 40236; bugfix on 0.4.3.1-alpha.

  o Minor bugfixes (compatibility):

    - Fix a failure in the test cases when running on the hppa

      architecture, along with a related test that might fail on other

      architectures in the future. Fixes bug 40274; bugfix

      on 0.2.5.1-alpha.

  o Minor bugfixes (directory authorities, voting):

    - Add a new consensus method (31) to support any future changes that

      authorities decide to make to the value of bwweightscale or

      maxunmeasuredbw. Previously, there was a bug that prevented the

      authorities from parsing these consensus parameters correctly under

      most circumstances. Fixes bug 19011; bugfix on 0.2.2.10-alpha.

  o Minor bugfixes (ipv6):

    - Allow non-SOCKSPorts to disable IPv4, IPv6, and Prefer IPv4. Some

      rare configs might break, but in this case you can disable

      NoIPv4Traffic and NoIPv6Traffic as needed. Fixes bug 33607; bugfix

      on 0.4.1.1-alpha. Patch by Neel Chauhan.

  o Minor bugfixes (key generation):

    - Do not require a valid torrc when using the `--keygen` argument to

      generate a signing key. This allows us to generate keys on systems

      or users which may not run Tor. Fixes bug 40235; bugfix on

      0.2.7.2-alpha. Patch by Neel Chauhan.

  o Minor bugfixes (onion services, logging):

    - Downgrade the severity of a few rendezvous circuit-related

      warnings from warning to info. Fixes bug 40207; bugfix on

      0.3.2.1-alpha. Patch by Neel Chauhan.

  o Minor bugfixes (relay):

    - Reduce the compression level for data streaming from HIGH to LOW.

      Fixes bug 40301; bugfix on 0.3.5.1-alpha.

  o Code simplification and refactoring:

    - Remove the orconn_ext_or_id_map structure and related functions.

      Nothing outside of unit tests looks up anything in this structure.

      Closes ticket 33383. Patch by Neel Chauhan.

  o Code simplification and refactoring (metrics, DoS):

    - Move the DoS subsystem into the subsys manager including its

      configuration options. Closes ticket 40261.

  o Removed features (relay):

    - Because DirPorts are only used on authorities, relays no longer

      advertise them. Similarly, self-testing for DirPorts has been

      disabled, since an unreachable DirPort is no reason for a relay

      not to advertise itself. (Configuring a DirPort will still work,

      for now.) Closes ticket 40282.

Changes in version 0.4.5.6 - 2021-02-15

  The Tor 0.4.5.x release series is dedicated to the memory of Karsten

  o Minor features (command-line interface):

    - When parsing command-line flags that take an optional argument,

      treat the argument as absent if it would start with a '-' character.

      Arguments in that form are not intelligible for any of our

      optional-argument flags.  Closes ticket 40223.

  o Minor bugfixes (directory authorities, voting):

    - Add a new consensus method (31) to support any future changes that

      authorities decide to make to the value of bwweightscale or

      maxunmeasuredbw. Previously, there was a bug that prevented the

      authorities from parsing these consensus parameters correctly under

      most circumstances.

      Fixes bug 19011; bugfix on 0.2.2.10-alpha.

  o Major features (statistics):

    - Relays will now also publish statistics about the number of v3 onion

      services and volume of v3 onion service traffic, in the same manner they

      already do for v2 onions.  Closes ticket 23126.

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  o Minor bugfixes (ipv6):

    - Allow non-SOCKSPorts to disable IPv4, IPv6, and Prefer IPv4. Some rare

      configs might break, but in this case you can disable NoIPv4Traffic and

      NoIPv6Traffic as needed. Fixes bug 33607; bugfix on 0.4.1.1-alpha. Patch

      by Neel Chauhan.