August 2023 - tor-relays - lists.torproject.org

Attempting to create a relay with Orbot
by blueapple128 20 Jun '25

20 Jun '25

Hi, I am trying to use Orbot's "Enable your device to be a non-exit relay" option, but (after waiting enough hours) the relay's nickname fails to show up in Tor Metrics' Relay Search. How can I begin to debug this?

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EFF's university Tor relay campaign
by Roger Dingledine 07 Dec '23

07 Dec '23

Hi folks! EFF has launched their advocacy campaign for getting more Tor relays running at universities: https://toruniversity.eff.org/ https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/08/announcing-tor-university-challenge https://www.eff.org/press/releases/eff-launches-tor-university-challenge We're focusing on universities in particular, not just to get more capacity for the Tor network, but also to strengthen the connections between the Tor network and academia. Universities are great locations for Tor relays for education (Tor is part of every cybersecurity curriculum these days), for community (growing connections between students and research groups), and for research (helping the Tor network stay strong so people can use it for research): https://toruniversity.eff.org/administrators/ https://blog.torproject.org/tor-heart-pets-and-privacy-research-community/ Having more relays at universities is especially useful because it can help others to see that running a relay is a normal and straightforward thing to do. So: if you are at a university, or you know somebody who is and want to help them, please consider setting up relays there. It can be anything from an exit relay (the most useful to Tor users, but the most work in terms of local advocacy and relationship-building), to a non-exit relay (still very useful to Tor users, because we need more network diversity), to a non-NATed Snowflake bridge (currently used most by people in Iran to get around their censorship and reach the Tor network). We started the campaign with thirteen institutions that are already running relays and/or other public infrastructure pieces: Technical University Berlin (Germany) Boston University (US) University of Cambridge (England) Carnegie Melon University (US) University College London (England) Georgetown University (US) Johannes Kepler Universität Linz (Austria) Karlstad University (Sweden) KU Leuven (Belgium) University of Michigan (US) University of Minnesota (US) Massachusetts Institute of Technology (US) University of Waterloo (Canada) Hopefully this list will make you impressed / excited / jealous and you will want to get your university onto it. :) Later steps in the campaign will be to understand which universities have IT departments that understand and value Tor, and which ones try to block you from using Tor on their network or block Tor users from reaching their webservers. We are also imagining to do an OONI workshop to help people do "how well does Tor work on this network" tests. Here is the internal coordination/roadmap ticket if you want to follow along in detail: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/community/relays/-/issues/67 Thanks! --Roger

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recommended way to run 0.4.7 on armhf?
by ilf 25 Nov '23

25 Nov '23

What's the recommended way to run 0.4.7 on armhf? > The package repository [deb.torproject.org] does not offer 32-bit ARM > architecture (armhf) images (yet). https://support.torproject.org/apt/tor-deb-repo/ Debian has 0.4.7 in bullseye-backports. But Raspbian doesn't have bullseye-backports: http://raspbian.raspberrypi.org/raspbian/dists/ -- ilf If you upload your address book to "the cloud", I don't want to be in it.

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relayor v23.2.0 is released
by nusenu 28 Aug '23

28 Aug '23

Hi, relayor v23.2.0 is released. relayor is an ansible role that helps you with running tor relays with minimal effort (automate everything). https://github.com/nusenu/ansible-relayor#main-benefits-for-a-tor-relay-ope… This release includes new prometheus alert rules so you do not forget to renew your relay certificates before they expire. This feature requires tor version 0.4.8 though which is unfortunately not yet available on deb.torproject.org stable repos. It also includes rules that alert you if your exit relay has an unhealthy DNS timeout fraction or if your relay is dropping onionskins for at least 15 minutes. Changelog: https://github.com/nusenu/ansible-relayor/releases/tag/v23.2.0 kind regards, nusenu -- https://nusenu.github.io

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Exit Relays: What is your DNS timeout rate?
by nusenu 26 Aug '23

26 Aug '23

Hi, the upcoming relayor release will contain new prometheus alert rules that should help operators detect/mitigate/prevent some common operational issues. One of these rules will alert on high DNS timeout rates [1] on exit relays that should be investigated and resolved to improve the Tor Browser experience for users. To define the default alert threshold it would be relevant to know current timeout rates by multiple exit operators. So if you feel up to it you can send me (off-list) your current timeout rates (30 day graph): If you run tor exits with relayor and MetricsPort enabled you can use these Prometheus queries: timeout percentage by server: (sum by (instance)(rate(tor_relay_exit_dns_error_total{reason="tor_timeout"}[15m])))/(sum by (instance)(rate(tor_relay_exit_dns_query_total[15m])))*100 DNS query rate: sum by (instance)(rate(tor_relay_exit_dns_query_total[15m])) If you run exits without relayor you can use these queries: (sum by (job)(rate(tor_relay_exit_dns_error_total{reason="tor_timeout"}[15m])))/(sum by (job)(rate(tor_relay_exit_dns_query_total[15m])))*100 sum(rate(tor_relay_exit_dns_query_total[15m])) kind regards, nusenu [1] https://github.com/nusenu/ansible-relayor/commit/9b6937563ec0b41e6abb0217ed… -- https://nusenu.github.io

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Wrong "first seen" flag for bridges at metrics.torproject.org
by telekobold 23 Aug '23

23 Aug '23

Hi together, I have an issue regarding the "first seen" flag at metrics.torproject.org: It is definitely wrong for my two bridges - both dates are much too close in the past. For one of the bridges, it seems to correspond to the last signing key renewal, for the other bridge, it seems to correspond to the penultimate signing key renewal. Has anyone observed similar behavior for its relay? (I found it meaningful to first ask here before creating an issue at [*]). [*] https://gitlab.torproject.org/hiro/onionoo/-/issues Kind regards, telekobold

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Tor-Bridge
by tor＠pqpera.xyz 19 Aug '23

19 Aug '23

Possible compression bomb; abandoning stream. <- Happened to my server for 2h straight. Should I take any measures against that? Bridge is obsf4 with fingerprint: 2EA91C1415C421424BB478A55790E655627DE366.

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Tor Relay in Kubernetes cluster
by Daniel Nikoloski 18 Aug '23

18 Aug '23

Hi all, Is anyone running Tor relay in k8s cluster? I am trying for a few days but It does not come alive. My servers are not behind a firewall, should be and are accessible, I run two bare-metal servers in Contabo. 1 master 1 node. Docker image and helm chart that use; https://gitlab.com/nikoloskid/tor-server The logs I get; > Aug 05 21:04:55.000 [notice] Now checking whether IPv4 ORPort 38.242.233.101:32150 is reachable... (this may take up to 20 minutes -- look for log messages indicating success) > Aug 05 21:24:45.000 [warn] Your server has not managed to confirm reachability for its ORPort(s) at 38.242.233.101:32150. Relays do not publish descriptors until their ORPort and DirPort are reachable. Please check your firewalls, ports > > , address, /etc/hosts file, etc. When i try telnet it is open to the internet > telnet 38.242.233.101 32150 > Trying 38.242.233.101... > Connected to 38.242.233.101. > Escape character is '^]'. You can see the service here; https://gitlab.com/nikoloskid/tor-server/-/raw/helm-chart-tor-relay/tor-ser… /etc/tor/torrc; > Nickname icebergk8s > Address 38.242.233.101 > ContactInfo nikoloskid(a)pm.me > RelayBandwidthRate 3.5MB > RelayBandwidthBurst 5MB > MaxAdvertisedBandwidth 5MB > ORPort 9001 NoAdvertise IPv4Only > ORPort 32150 NoListen IPv4Only > SocksPort 0 > ExitPolicy reject *:* > User debian-tor > DataDirectory /var/lib/tor Lep pozdrav / Best Regards, Daniel Nikoloski

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Tor Relay Operator meetup @ CCCamp 2023 - Saturday 19th @ 7pm
by gus 17 Aug '23

17 Aug '23

Hello, The Tor Relay Operator Meetup - Chaos Communication Camp-2023[1] will happen at Bornhack (Cold North Village)[2] on Saturday, August 19th at 7pm (local time). After the meetup, we invite everyone to stay and have beer and drinks at Bornhack. Please spread the message. We have Tor stickers for you! :) Gus [1] https://events.ccc.de/camp/2023/infos/ [2] Coordinates: 53.0314175, 13.3065457 https://map.events.ccc.de/camp/2023/map/#20/53.03143/13.3066 -- The Tor Project Community Team Lead

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WebTunnel: What ASNs/networks work best?
by tor-home at encryptfirst.com 17 Aug '23

17 Aug '23

When running a WebTunnel bridge, what types of IPs are better for serving requests? My background is with self-hosted home-lab type of setups. There are a number of different ways for homelabs to accept inbound https connections. A few examples: - Forward a port on a home router. - Rent a cloud VM/VPS and tunnel a port from the VPS's IP. - Have a CDN tunnel/forward requests. - VPN hybrid solutions like Tailscale Funnel. Are any of these better than others for hosting a WebTunnel bridge? Should cloud provider IPs be preferred over residential IPs, for example, considering that is where most web servers are hosted? Are large CDNs preferred over individual cloud VMs? Is it better to use a different IP for WebTunnel than the IP that runs the OR port (i.e. host OR port on home IP and WebTunnel from a cloud-based IP)? I'm mainly asking to determine which way helps the broadest number of Tor users. And which is less likely to be blocked in the future. What are the best practices? PS: Thanks for the webtunnel-bridge Docker image and the documentation on how to run it. It was very helpful and made setup easy.

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