[katzenpost] Issues with PANDA

[dawuud]

Hey Lasse,

Thanks for trying out katzenpost.
Cool project you are working on!

I wrote catshadow but sadly it is not yet production quality code.
However it might work well enough for your project.
Unfortunately I haven't had much time to work on catshadow lately but I'd like to at least
help you get it working on your locally running test mixnet. Tomorrow I am taking a train
to Berlin. Once I am there I would have time to help you. If it helps we could schedule an
audio call. It might also be helpful for me to see your log files.

Firstly, catshadow tries to register an account on a mixnet Provider. After that it tries to
connect to that Provider and create a message spool with the memspool server. The PANDA service
would not be evoked until you try to add a new contact. Each of these server components has
log files we could examine.

I will send you an e-mail with my contact information.


Cheers,
David

On Tue, Jul 02, 2019 at 04:04:08PM +0000, Lasse Wolter wrote:
> Hey,
> this is Lasse Wolter, a Computer Science student at University of Edinburgh. At first I want to thank you for all the work you have put/are putting into this project and I'm enjoying working with it.
> I'm currently doing an internship with the following title:
> "Augmenting Anonymous Networks with Telemetry Feedback"
> 
> I'm trying to evaluate the mixnet traffic under different conditions and investigate if it would make sense to implement some kind of control algorithm for changing the mixnet parameters automatically. I'm trying to use katzenpost for this project.
> I've set up a mixnet in a virtual machine consisting of:
> 
>   *
> 1 authority
>   *
> 2 providers
>      *
> both running memspool as an external plugin
>      *
> one of them running PANDA as external plugin
>   *
>   *
> 6 mixes
> 
> Things seem to start up fine and the PKI document is generated.
> Now, for the experiments itself I need to send messages. Hence, I'm trying to use the catshadow client to create users, add them as contacts of one another and send messages.
> When I connect two catshadow sessions to your mixnet (provider: idefix), create users and add them as contacts, I can let them talk to one another. Looking at the catshadow logs, I see the debug message:
> "PANDA exchange completed"
> 
> However, running the exact same setup - this time connected to my local mixnet - I receive the following message:
> "Failure waiting for reply, timeout reached"
> 
> Now, I'm not sure if this is an issue with my mixnet or with PANDA. Could you provide any help with this/tell me how PANDA is setup on your mixnet?
> 
> I'm using:
> 
>   *
> catshadow: release v0.0.1
>   *
> PANDA: release v0.0.3
> 
> Thanks a lot for your help and for all the work you are putting into this project.
> 
> Best wishes,
> 
> Lasse
> 
> 
> 
> 
>  The University of Edinburgh is a charitable body, registered in Scotland, with registration number SC005336.

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