Re: [bitcoin-dev] Planned Obsolescence
I assume this has been well discussed in at some point in the Bitcoin community, so I apologize if I'm repeating old ideas. Problem exploitable nodes: It is plausible that people running these versions of bitcoind may not be applying patches. Thus, these nodes may be vulnerable to known exploits. I would hope none of these nodes are gateway nodes for miners, web wallets or exchanges. How difficult would it be to crawl the network to find vulnerable nodes and exploit them? What percentage of the network is running vulnerable versions of bitcoind? Problem eclipsable nodes: Currently a bitcoind node disconnects from any node with a version below MIN_PEER_PROTO_VERSION. Such nodes become be ripe for an eclipse attack because they are partitioned from the newer nodes, especially when they are "freshly obsolete". I have not examined how protocol versioning works in detail so I could be missing something. One option could be that after a grace period: 1. to still connect to obsolete nodes and even to transmit blockheaders, 2. but to stop sending the full-blocks and transactions to these nodes, thereby alerting the operator that something is wrong and causing them to upgrade. It may make sense to create this as a rule, if your longest chain consists of only blockheaders and no one will tell you the transactions for over 1000 blocks you are obsolete, spit out an error message and shutdown. This would not address the issue of alt-coins which are forked from old vulnerable versions of bitcoind, but that is probably out of scope. On Thu, Dec 15, 2016 at 1:48 PM, Jorge Timón via bitcoin-dev wrote: > On Thu, Dec 15, 2016 at 4:38 AM, Juan Garavaglia via bitcoin-dev > wrote: >> Older node versions may generate issues because some upgrades will make >> several of the nodes running older protocol versions obsolete and or >> incompatible. There may be other hard to predict behaviors on older versions >> of the client. > > Hard to predict or not, you can't force people to run newer software. > >> In order to avoid such wide fragmentation of "Bitcoin Core” node versions >> and to help there be a more predictable protocol improvement process, I >> consider it worth it to analyze introducing some planned obsolescence in >> each new version. In the last year we had 4 new versions so if each version >> is valid for about 1 year (52560 blocks) this may be a reasonable time frame >> for node operators to upgrade. If a node does not upgrade it will stop >> working instead of participating in the network with an outdated protocol >> version. > > When you introduce anti-features like this in free software they can > be trivially removed and they likely will. > >> These changes may also simplify the developer's jobs in some cases by >> avoiding them having to deal with ancient versions of the client. > > There's a simpler solution for this which is what is being done now: > stop maintaining and giving support for older versions. > There's limited resources and developers are rarely interested in > fixing bugs for very old versions. Users shouldn't expect things to be > backported to old versions (if developers do it and there's enough > testing, there's no reason not to do more releases of old versions, it > is just rarely the case). > ___ > bitcoin-dev mailing list > bitcoin-dev@lists.linuxfoundation.org > https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/bitcoin-dev ___ bitcoin-dev mailing list bitcoin-dev@lists.linuxfoundation.org https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/bitcoin-dev
Re: [bitcoin-dev] Planned Obsolescence
Perhaps if there were a message that would nag your stdout or log output letting you know there's a new version available, or N more versions available and that you might be missing out on X security patches, Y protocol improvements, depending on how far back you are, you'd be tempted to upgrade, works for me in Ubuntu every time I log to my servers and I see how far behind I am in terms of available updates. Other thing done in open source projects to encourage updates, is to automatically distribute (download) the patches and let the node operator know an update has been downloaded for them, and let them know they're just one step away from applying such update. We do this for our bittorrent client. We don't ever want to do automatic upgrades of our network, however, we want to make it painless to update. For Bitcoin this could be done for the official binary distribution, would not be an option for those that build from source. On Thu, Dec 15, 2016 at 11:49 AM Jorge Timón via bitcoin-dev < bitcoin-dev@lists.linuxfoundation.org> wrote: > On Thu, Dec 15, 2016 at 4:38 AM, Juan Garavaglia via bitcoin-dev > wrote: > > Older node versions may generate issues because some upgrades will make > > several of the nodes running older protocol versions obsolete and or > > incompatible. There may be other hard to predict behaviors on older > versions > > of the client. > > Hard to predict or not, you can't force people to run newer software. > > > In order to avoid such wide fragmentation of "Bitcoin Core” node versions > > and to help there be a more predictable protocol improvement process, I > > consider it worth it to analyze introducing some planned obsolescence in > > each new version. In the last year we had 4 new versions so if each > version > > is valid for about 1 year (52560 blocks) this may be a reasonable time > frame > > for node operators to upgrade. If a node does not upgrade it will stop > > working instead of participating in the network with an outdated protocol > > version. > > When you introduce anti-features like this in free software they can > be trivially removed and they likely will. > > > These changes may also simplify the developer's jobs in some cases by > > avoiding them having to deal with ancient versions of the client. > > There's a simpler solution for this which is what is being done now: > stop maintaining and giving support for older versions. > There's limited resources and developers are rarely interested in > fixing bugs for very old versions. Users shouldn't expect things to be > backported to old versions (if developers do it and there's enough > testing, there's no reason not to do more releases of old versions, it > is just rarely the case). > ___ > bitcoin-dev mailing list > bitcoin-dev@lists.linuxfoundation.org > https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/bitcoin-dev > ___ bitcoin-dev mailing list bitcoin-dev@lists.linuxfoundation.org https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/bitcoin-dev
Re: [bitcoin-dev] Planned Obsolescence
On Thu, Dec 15, 2016 at 4:38 AM, Juan Garavaglia via bitcoin-dev wrote: > Older node versions may generate issues because some upgrades will make > several of the nodes running older protocol versions obsolete and or > incompatible. There may be other hard to predict behaviors on older versions > of the client. Hard to predict or not, you can't force people to run newer software. > In order to avoid such wide fragmentation of "Bitcoin Core” node versions > and to help there be a more predictable protocol improvement process, I > consider it worth it to analyze introducing some planned obsolescence in > each new version. In the last year we had 4 new versions so if each version > is valid for about 1 year (52560 blocks) this may be a reasonable time frame > for node operators to upgrade. If a node does not upgrade it will stop > working instead of participating in the network with an outdated protocol > version. When you introduce anti-features like this in free software they can be trivially removed and they likely will. > These changes may also simplify the developer's jobs in some cases by > avoiding them having to deal with ancient versions of the client. There's a simpler solution for this which is what is being done now: stop maintaining and giving support for older versions. There's limited resources and developers are rarely interested in fixing bugs for very old versions. Users shouldn't expect things to be backported to old versions (if developers do it and there's enough testing, there's no reason not to do more releases of old versions, it is just rarely the case). ___ bitcoin-dev mailing list bitcoin-dev@lists.linuxfoundation.org https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/bitcoin-dev
Re: [bitcoin-dev] Planned Obsolescence
Maybe there are still some advantages but I don't know why this is not considered as a major issue by the bitcoin community for the future and why this looks to be never discussed: - the size of the bitcoin network in terms of full nodes is ridiculous and this is continuously decreasing, we cannot consider the bitcoin network as a decentralized p2p network, what you are proposing is logical but will of course amplify the problem >For reasons I am unable to determine a significant number of node operators do not upgrade their clients. Why should they? What is the incentive for people to run full nodes and upgrade? FYI I am part of the 2071 0.13.1 nodes for some good reasons but will just shut it down when I am done, same for zcash (which as a matter of fact I upgraded today since by some chance I noticed some updates I was not aware of neither notified, just running it because I need it from time to time and just don't kill it so I don't have to wait for the restart process, maybe others are doing the same or just forgot that they were running a full node) Because, again, why should I or we maintain it/them? I have looked at the proposals in the past (as well as the incentive program) to reward those that are running full nodes but only found a very few, never implemented (or even considered) This is the very same for proposals allowing to start a full node from zero in an acceptable timeframe (ie not 10 days in my case) If the consensus is not to solve those two points and have a bitcoin network controlled then it would be interesting to know why, so people don't waste time trying to find solutions Satoshi himself predicted that the full nodes will get centralized, I think it's wrong, or in that case the bitcoin network cannot pretend to be a decentralized immutable system (can be compared then to the Tor network which does not pretend to be decentralized, because it is centralized, and in addition does not encourage small nodes) PS: IMHO the email notificiation system makes it difficult to follow whom is answering to whom/what on this list compared to other lists -- Zcash wallets made simple: https://github.com/Ayms/zcash-wallets Bitcoin wallets made simple: https://github.com/Ayms/bitcoin-wallets Get the torrent dynamic blocklist: http://peersm.com/getblocklist Check the 10 M passwords list: http://peersm.com/findmyass Anti-spies and private torrents, dynamic blocklist: http://torrent-live.org Peersm : http://www.peersm.com torrent-live: https://github.com/Ayms/torrent-live node-Tor : https://www.github.com/Ayms/node-Tor GitHub : https://www.github.com/Ayms ___ bitcoin-dev mailing list bitcoin-dev@lists.linuxfoundation.org https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/bitcoin-dev
[bitcoin-dev] Planned Obsolescence
Today according to the stats at https://bitnodes.21.co/nodes/ the top 10 Bitcoin running node versions are: 1. _Version Satoshi:0.13.1 _Nodes 2071 _38.97% 2. _Version Satoshi:0.12.1 _Nodes 1022 _19.23% 3. Satoshi:0.13.0 _Nodes 604 _11.36% 4. Bitcoin Unlimited:0.12.1 _Nodes 373 _7.02% 5. Satoshi:0.11.2 _Nodes 183 _3.44% 6. Satoshi:0.12.0 _Nodes 131 _2.46% 7. Satoshi:0.13.99 _Nodes 122 _2.30% 8. Satoshi:0.11.0 _Nodes 87 _1.64% 9. BTCC:0.13.1 _Nodes 53 _1.00% 10. Satoshi:0.10.2 _Nodes 52 _0.98% Other _Nodes 617 _11.61% There are 75 different versions of visible nodes on the network. More than 30% of the nodes running Bitcoin Core are running versions older than 0.13.0. For reasons I am unable to determine a significant number of node operators do not upgrade their clients. I also know newer versions require the same or fewer hardware resources to run than the same network requirements as older versions of the client. Older node versions may generate issues because some upgrades will make several of the nodes running older protocol versions obsolete and or incompatible. There may be other hard to predict behaviors on older versions of the client. In order to avoid such wide fragmentation of "Bitcoin Core” node versions and to help there be a more predictable protocol improvement process, I consider it worth it to analyze introducing some planned obsolescence in each new version. In the last year we had 4 new versions so if each version is valid for about 1 year (52560 blocks) this may be a reasonable time frame for node operators to upgrade. If a node does not upgrade it will stop working instead of participating in the network with an outdated protocol version. These changes may also simplify the developer's jobs in some cases by avoiding them having to deal with ancient versions of the client. Regards Juan Garavaglia ___ bitcoin-dev mailing list bitcoin-dev@lists.linuxfoundation.org https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/bitcoin-dev
