August 2011 - tor-relays - lists.torproject.org

increase txqueuelen: reasonable or not?
by Steve Snyder 26 Aug '11

26 Aug '11

The config page at torservers.net advises increasing the TX Queue Length from the default 1,000 to 20,000. For a differing opinion see the assertion that this increases latencies and hampers network congestion recovery ("bufferbloat"): http://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/gentoo-centos-rhel-debian-fedora-increasing-tx… I'm running an exit node on a 100Mbps network (multi-core CPU on RHEL5), and typically have 600 - 800 connections at any given time. TorStatus usually reports my throughput at 700KB to 800KB per second. I suspect that the 20,000 recommendation pertains to Gbit Ethernet. Still, though, is the default of 1,000 adequate for my Tor traffic? More generally, I haven't tweaked my networking (system network buffer sizes, etc.) because it is unclear to me what recommendations are appropriate for exit nodes running contemporary versions (v0.2.2.30+) of Tor. Reliable benchmarking can't be done because the system load varies with traffic at any given time. Is there a way to prove empirically that this or that adjustment to the system configuration really has an effect on the performance of a Tor relay node? Thanks.

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Sorry, HotMail users, you're rejected
by Steve Snyder 23 Aug '11

23 Aug '11

Got another threatening e-mail from my ISP today, prompted by another SpamCop complaint regarding spam run through HotMail. HotMail records the address of the originating server and that, again, is my exit node. So I have to curtail exit access to HotMail. Yeah, it sucks, but I know of no way to block the sending of webmail while still allowing it to be retrieved.

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relay uptime and stable flag
by Sambuddho Chakravarty 19 Aug '11

19 Aug '11

Dear All I see some relays with uptimes over 100 days (eg. Pandora14), but they don't have the stable flag enabled ... In the FAQ page it says that relays are marked stable when they are running for more than a day, however in the directory service page I see relays which are running for more than 200 days but not marked stable and some which are running for about 3 hours already have the stable flag. Why is there this difference ? Thanks Sambuddho

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tornodeca is back
by cmeclax-sazri 17 Aug '11

17 Aug '11

There's only one now, in Canada, but it has the same nonexistent contact address my(a)mail.info as before, and again I got forwarding failure when my tor picked tornodeca as an exit for a website. cmeclax

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Mitch McConnell
by Darrel 14 Aug '11

14 Aug '11

Well, nevermind. I do not need anonymity that badly- it is a thing of the past. Might as well be Japan defending nuclear power. Hi Mitch McConnell- ever smoke a joint? What is in the tea? Is it Republican? Do you have a fear of Kentuckians making money from plants? Commerce Man

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exit node with private directory server
by Darrel 14 Aug '11

14 Aug '11

I have been reading the documentation and trying to get up to speed. Much of this is new to me. My goal is to have a directory server that is only available on my local-area network and on the same machine run an exit node available to the "onion network". Is this sort of configuration possible? I am installing a dedicated FreeBSD 9-beta computer at the moment and want to run run this configuration as my first tor installation. Darrel

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directory and exit node on same server
by Darrel 14 Aug '11

14 Aug '11

I have been reading the documentation and trying to get up to speed. Much of this is new to me. My goal is to have a directory server that is only available on my local-area network and on the same machine run an exit node available to the "onion network". Is this sort of configuration possible? I am installing a dedicated FreeBSD 9-beta computer at the moment and want to run private directory and "public" exit node. Darrel

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circuit ends in myself
by cmeclax-sazri 11 Aug '11

11 Aug '11

I just restarted tor after upgrading the version, then brought up Vidalia, and one of the circuits ends in myself! (xxx,xxx,cmeclax0 where the xxx's are other relays) How come? I'm a middleman.

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Received abuse complaint - how did this happen?
by Steve Snyder 10 Aug '11

10 Aug '11

Today my ISP informed me that an abuse complaint had been lodged against me by spamcop.net. I looked at the report and my IP is indeed in it. It seems like a valid complaint. My question, though, is how did this happen? I'm using the Reduced Exit Policy as shown here: https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/wiki/TheOnionRouter/ReducedExitPol… Neither SMTP nor SMTPS are among the ports accepted as exit ports. Anyone have any thoughts as to how my Tor config can be used to transmit spam? Thanks.

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jumping clock
by Softail 09 Aug '11

09 Aug '11

Every few days I find a log message like this Aug 08 07:20:09.241 [warn] Your system clock just jumped 122 seconds forward; assuming established circuits no longer work. Seems to always be 122 seconds as far as I can tell and happens at random times. Doesn't seem to be correlated with the log rotations or anything else. I'm running ntpd and that seems to be working fine. I started to let it use the kludge local clock in case the network was unavailable. I didn't think that was likely and it doesn't seem to have made any difference. Google turns up some complaints about this on much older versions 2.0.23. I'm currently running 2.1.30 from the Tor repository. It's i386 running on x86_64. I suppose I could try rebuilding a 64 bit version but so far haven't built my own yet. Would eventually like to dig into the sources but don't have time right now. Anybody else see this or have suggestions about what to do about it? Thanks -- A man in chains knows he should have acted sooner... Julian Assange

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