Tails

#1 Updated by intrigeri 2020-03-15 10:24:14

• related to Bug #15548: Tails can't establish a connection with obfs4 bridges and a hardware clock too far away from UTC added

#2 Updated by intrigeri 2020-03-15 10:24:21

• related to Feature #15599: Improve known issues about clock going backwards added

#3 Updated by sajolida 2020-03-24 21:19:14

• File Additional_Clocks.png added
• File Beijing.png added
• File Time_Language.png added
• Status changed from New to Confirmed

Indeed, we should mention this issue on
/doc/first_steps/startup_options/bridge_mode/.

Still, let’s be clear that the current known issue is crap, so the extra work of making it more visible as is will probably be helpful to very few people and might even be dangerous:

• We don’t tell how far is too far East from UTC.

Someone on Tor#32439 reports that UTC+3 is already problematic.
Do we have a way of knowing how far East is too far?

• I bet that Tor Launcher can get stuck on “Loading Network Consensus”
  for other different reasons: at least bad or slow network, maybe
  censorship (I’m guessing).

• The workaround that we are pointing to currently is to hack the
  Windows registry. Something that very few people will know how to do and
  that might vary depending on the version of Windows. I’m afraid that people
  could break their Windows if they applied a wrong variant or didn’t
  apply it correctly. We could still keep it as an alternative for power users
  but only if we had something better.

We could:

1. Only explicit the problem but not mention the registry hack anymore. Maybe it’s better than nothing. Something along the lines of what we already have:

If you are East from UTC, connecting to Tor using `obfs4` bridges might be impossible and Tor Launcher might get stuck on Loading Network Consensus.

2. Instruct people to try setting their Windows on UTC from the UI. I tested this on Windows 10. The result is less convenient than hacking the registry but it’s way easier to perform and potentially less dangerous. People could test whether this solve their problem. If it does, they could either do the change when needed or configure another display clock for their local time. As you can see, not a really great solution either.

Below are some screenshots of this process.

Honestly, the situation of Tails with bridges has been very bad since pretty much forever because we lack development resources. I’m not sure that investing several hours of Technical Writing into this would make a significant difference so I’m tempted to go for 1 and forget about it.

intrigeri + cbrownstein: What do you think?