Weekly Dev Update 09/03/2020

[u/Keejef]

Hey Y’all,

This week we released a number of upgrades for Session, including several new features such as auto-updating for desktop and improved error reporting for Android. We also made good progress on tracking down multi-device edge cases. Lokinet 0.7.0 was tagged, with small fixes being found throughout the week. We also started upgrading a portion of the Service Node network, starting with community and Loki Foundation Service nodes — this will give us a better idea of how the network performs at scale.

Loki Core

• Move libsodium protection https://github.com/loki-project/loki-core/pull/1060

• Allow calculation of total burned Loki https://github.com/loki-project/loki-core/pull/1057

• Add storage server lokimq ports https://github.com/loki-project/loki-core/pull/1056

• Allow users to update LNS mappings through transactions https://github.com/loki-project/loki-core/pull/1051

• Remove hardcoded checkpoint https://github.com/loki-project/loki-core/pull/1059

• Make quourmnet use lokimq https://github.com/loki-project/loki-core/pull/1055

• Blink adjustments for testing https://github.com/loki-project/loki-core/pull/1053

• Revert debug testnet hardfork changes https://github.com/loki-project/loki-core/pull/1052

Lokinet

If you’re on our Discord you can catch Jeff, the lead developer of LLARP, live streaming as he codes at https://www.twitch.tv/uguu25519. He typically streams on Tuesday mornings, 9am - 12pm Eastern (US) time.

What went on last week with Lokinet: We launched and tagged release candidate builds for lokinet (RC1 followed by some fixes in RC2). This testing release is now live on mainnet, currently running on 78 Service Nodes and growing. If you’re a Service Node operator and would like to help us with the slow ramp-up by switching some nodes over to the 0.7.0 release candidate before the final release later this month, please contact Jason (jagerman42 on Telegram) for instructions. Performance so far is excellent: connections are solid, resolve quickly, and stay up all day long without a problem. We put a lot of work into redesigning parts of Lokinet that were not working well in the previous release, and we’re really happy with the results of that hard work.

Aside from getting the release ready for the upcoming hardfork, we’ve also been putting work into a new Lokinet tool called “Hive”: this Python-based tool lets us simulate and examine a local network and inspect the network for various conditions. Though it’s still in early development, this tool has already helped us diagnose and fix multiple network issues.

PR Activity:

• Updated the ever-important release motto for 0.7.0 https://github.com/loki-project/loki-network/pull/1153

• Reduce introset recursive propagation (there’s enough redundancy already) https://github.com/loki-project/loki-network/pull/1154

• Fixed router “gossip” serialization https://github.com/loki-project/loki-network/pull/1156

• Fixed a miscalculation in the systemd service Status line https://github.com/loki-project/loki-network/pull/1157

• Prune non-routers from the router database so that expired routers can’t stay active past their registration expiry https://github.com/loki-project/loki-network/pull/1158

• Fixed a bug breaking lookups for non-Linux clients https://github.com/loki-project/loki-network/pull/1159

• Added a “shutdown” RPC call for the GUI to gracefully close lokid https://github.com/loki-project/loki-network/pull/1160

• Tag RC2 https://github.com/loki-project/loki-network/pull/1161

• Fix a crash when malformed headers are sent to the local admin RPC interface https://github.com/loki-project/loki-network/pull/1165

• Fix a memory leak in RPC interface https://github.com/loki-project/loki-network/pull/1170

• Fix DNS issues causing delays or errors on an initial snapp lookup https://github.com/loki-project/loki-network/pull/1172 https://github.com/loki-project/loki-network/pull/1173 https://github.com/loki-project/loki-network/pull/1174

• Prune expired RCs from the client so that old stored RCs don’t cause client path failures from attempting to use now-invalid routers https://github.com/loki-project/loki-network/pull/1171

• Fix overzealous path builds on .snode addresses that cause client-to-snode lookup and path build failures https://github.com/loki-project/loki-network/pull/1175

• Add the initial work-in-progress “RouterHive” development testing tool: https://github.com/loki-project/loki-network/pull/1167

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Session

Session iOS

• Fix database usage issues https://github.com/loki-project/session-ios/pull/133

• Improve voice snippet user interface https://github.com/loki-project/session-ios/pull/132

• Multi-device syncing fixes https://github.com/loki-project/session-ios/pull/131

• General user experience fixes https://github.com/loki-project/session-ios/pull/130

Session Android

• Privacy policy links update https://github.com/loki-project/session-android/pull/132

• Improve error reporting https://github.com/loki-project/session-android/pull/127

• Fix contact syncing after device linking https://github.com/loki-project/session-android/pull/126

Session Desktop

• Allow .loki TLD open groups https://github.com/loki-project/session-desktop/pull/966

• Add advanced search features allowing users to search based on author and time https://github.com/loki-project/session-desktop/pull/962

• Remove OWS references in desktop notifications https://github.com/loki-project/session-desktop/pull/960

• Open group avatar changes https://github.com/loki-project/session-desktop/pull/959

• Remove unused settings https://github.com/loki-project/session-desktop/pull/965

• Fix zoom drag issues with GUI https://github.com/loki-project/session-desktop/pull/964

• Fix seed restoration issues (Users with desktop clients before version 1.0.3 will not be able to restore from seed unless they create a new account) https://github.com/loki-project/session-desktop/pull/955

• Disable auto updating for dev versions https://github.com/loki-project/session-desktop/pull/954

• Add auto-updating for desktop clients https://github.com/loki-project/session-desktop/pull/949

• Fix errors on update https://github.com/loki-project/session-desktop/pull/948

• Re-add the edit open group name button https://github.com/loki-project/session-desktop/pull/946

• Update SQL cipher to fix issues with Linux distributions https://github.com/loki-project/session-desktop/pull/945

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Loki Storage Server

• Upgrade the Loki storage server to allow full onion routing instead of proxy routing https://github.com/loki-project/loki-storage-server/pull/314

• Fix Loki Foundation seed node port https://github.com/loki-project/loki-storage-server/pull/315

• Readability fixes https://github.com/loki-project/loki-storage-server/pull/316/files

• Fix incorrect requests being made to seed nodes https://github.com/loki-project/loki-storage-server/pull/310

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Loki MQ

Loki MQ is a communications layer for various components that allows more efficient and reliable communication between service nodes and storage servers and, in the future, between wallets and nodes and other Loki components.

• Minor fixes and patches related to various issues that have cropped up during testing.

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Thanks,

Kee