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Run your Tor client, with a datadirectory pointed to a new (empty or nonexistent) directory.

Once the Tor client has made the datadir and satisfied itself about its permissions, but while it's still bootstrapping, rm -rf the datadirectory.

It will produce an unending stream of

Sep 02 00:38:26.849 [warn] Couldn't open "/tmp/tordatadir/cached-microdescs.new" (/tmp/tordatadir/cached-microdescs.new) for writing: No such file or directory
Sep 02 00:38:26.849 [warn] Couldn't append to journal in /tmp/tordatadir/cached-microdescs.new: No such file or directory

which is not surprising since the directory isn't there anymore. The sad part though is:

Sep 02 00:28:59.198 [debug] count_usable_descriptors(): 4183 usable, 0 present (microdescs).
Sep 02 00:28:59.207 [debug] count_usable_descriptors(): 917 usable, 0 present (microdesc exits).
Sep 02 00:28:59.215 [debug] count_usable_descriptors(): 917 usable, 0 present (microdesc exits).
Sep 02 00:29:00.812 [debug] count_usable_descriptors(): 4183 usable, 0 present (microdescs).
Sep 02 00:29:00.819 [debug] count_usable_descriptors(): 917 usable, 0 present (microdesc exits).
Sep 02 00:29:00.825 [debug] count_usable_descriptors(): 917 usable, 0 present (microdesc exits).
Sep 02 00:29:12.586 [debug] count_usable_descriptors(): 4183 usable, 0 present (microdescs).
Sep 02 00:29:12.593 [debug] count_usable_descriptors(): 917 usable, 0 present (microdesc exits).
Sep 02 00:29:12.600 [debug] count_usable_descriptors(): 917 usable, 0 present (microdesc exits).
[...]
Sep 02 00:35:29.524 [debug] count_usable_descriptors(): 4183 usable, 0 present (microdescs).
Sep 02 00:35:29.532 [debug] count_usable_descriptors(): 917 usable, 0 present (microdesc exits).
Sep 02 00:35:29.539 [debug] count_usable_descriptors(): 917 usable, 0 present (microdesc exits).

It seems like it's stuck in a loop realizing it doesn't have them, fetching them, failing to write them, realizing it doesn't have them, repeat.

Found while trying to reproduce #9639 (moved).