Remove the $ from family fingerprints
It's not needed, and it causes issues for naïve shell users.
Activity
changed milestone to %Onionoo-1.9.0
The dollar signs are added by Onionoo (see https://onionoo.torproject.org/details?fields=effective_family&limit=10) so it would probably be better to fix Onionoo instead.
Keep this ticket open though because Atlas needs some cleaning up once Onionoo fixes the issue.
Replying to cypherpunks:
The dollar signs are added by Onionoo (see https://onionoo.torproject.org/details?fields=effective_family&limit=10) so it would probably be better to fix Onionoo instead.
Hmm, to be precise, the dollar signs are not added by Onionoo. It simply copies over entries from relays‘ „family“ lines. See also dir-spec.txt. But I have to admit that we‘re not including dollar signs in other fingerprints, including „fingerprint“ and „hashed_fingerprint“. Maybe we should indeed remove the dollar signs in Onionoo. That requires a major protocol change though, because we‘d be modifying an existing field. Should we do it?
Keep this ticket open though because Atlas needs some cleaning up once Onionoo fixes the issue.
What cleaning up is that? Mind if we move this ticket to Metrics/Onionoo until the feature is implemented?
I would maybe discuss this at tor-project@ or metrics-team@ (where do Onionoo users hang out?), but it's definitely not an Atlas specific issue.
The Atlas issue, if it exists, would be to make sure that we are happy with either $ or no $. i.e. we remove $ signs where needed but we don't just blindly remove the first character. I've made a note to check if this problem exists and will file an Atlas ticket if it does.
Trac:
Component: Metrics/Atlas to Metrics/Onionoo-
I think we can just decide whether we want to make this change or not, without going out and asking users. After all, Onionoo users are developers, not end users. If they'd prefer to keep the $ for their users, they could easily add it back to any hex string of 40 characters contained in the three family-related fields. But I somehow doubt that. In particular the part about other fingerprints and hashed fingerprint not starting with $ is pretty convincing. Let's remove the last remaining $ from family fingerprints, too.
I wrote a simple patch in my task-22261 branch that needs review.
Regarding documentation, I suggest we simply remove the "$-prefixed" part in the specification, e.g., "Array of
$-prefixedfingerprints of relays that are in an effective, mutual family relationship with this relay. These relays are part of this relay's family and they consider this relay to be part of their family. Omitted if empty or if descriptor containing this information cannot be found. Removed $ from fingerprints on October XY, 2017."And just as a reminder: when we deploy it, we'll need to do a major protocol version bump. That means announcing the protocol change at least 1 month before releasing the change.
Trac:
Status: new to needs_review -
I have made Atlas not care if there are $ signs or not.
https://gitweb.torproject.org/atlas.git/commit/?id=8500dc6f34ad32b3c8fb7ef72a1a59e29de756f0
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Thanks for looking! Pushed a change to schedule the next major version update for November 30 in the hope that we'll get most of the Onionoo changes merged this month. We can always push back the date if needed. Setting to needs_information until that time has passed.
Trac:
Status: merge_ready to needs_information 
Replying to karsten:
Note to self: add a change log entry before merging.
Oh, I overlooked the missing changelog entry. Setting to needs revision ;-) Added milestone 1.7.0. This ticket should be closed when the changelog is updated. Ticket #24059 (moved) makes sure the web site protocol description is updated accordingly.