- tor-relays - lists.torproject.org

Re: [tor-relays] [OT] ExcludeNodes no longer working
by Scott Bennett 12 Sep '12

12 Sep '12

Hi Jacob et al., On Tue, 11 Sep 2012 17:12:06 +0000 Jacob Appelbaum <jacob(a)appelbaum.net> wrote: >It is nice to see you posting again, I had wondered where you had gone. I've been here all along, but didn't have anything to say until this matter came up. > >Scott Bennett: >> I know this really belongs on tor-talk, but I haven't been subscribed >> to it for a long time now. Sorry if posting this here bothers anyone. > > >Seems like a fine place to discuss relay problems, which is what it >sounds like, no? Um, no, it seems to me that Exclude{,Exit}Node matters are client-side stuff. That's where the circuit routes are selected, which is where those torrc lines come into play, right? > >> Back in early July, I upgraded from 0.2.3.13-alpha to 0.2.3.18-rc. >> I immediately ran into problems with a python script that honors the >> http_proxy environment variable, which I normally have set to the localhost >> port for privoxy, which, in turn, connects to tor's SOCKS port. I couldn't >> really see what was going wrong, but using arm to ask for a new identity >> seemed to help sometimes to get a circuit that worked. Sending tor a >> SIGHUP instead also seemed to work about as often. > >If you use 0.2.2.x - what happens? No idea. I haven't built a "stable" version in at least five years, probably longer. > >> A bit over a week ago, I switched to 0.2.3.20-rc, and the problem >> still occurs. However, 0.2.3.20-rc now also emits a new message from time >> to time, the most recent occurrence of which is >> >> Sep 06 06:02:45.934 [notice] Low circuit success rate 7/21 for guard TORy0=753E0B5922E34BF98F0D21CC08EA7D1ADEEE2F6B. >> > >That is an interesting message - I wonder if the author of that message >might chime in? > >> Wondering whether such circuit-building failures might be related to the >> other problem, I began a little experiment: each time I saw a "Low circuit >> success rate" message, I added the key fingerprint of the node in question >> to my ExcludeNodes list in torrc and sent tor a SIGHUP. >> The problem is still occurring, though, and when I look at the >> circuits involved, they all seem to have at least one of the excluded >> nodes in them, usually in the entry position. So my question is, what >> changed between 0.2.3.13-alpha and 0.2.3.18-rc (or possibly 0.2.3.20-rc) >> in the handling of nodes listed in the ExcludeNodes line in torrc? And >> is there anything I can do to get the ExcludeNodes list to work again >> the way it used to work? >> Thanks in advance for any relevant information. >> > >It seems that there are two issues - one is that a guard is failing to >build circuits, the other is that you can't seem to exclude them. I have Right, but the guard's problem really shouldn't be my problem, although I suppose I could try emailing the node's operator about it. >to admit, I'm more interested in the former... Is there a pattern to the >failures? That is for the 7 successes for that node, did you see >anything interesting? Were say, the nodes that worked somehow in the >same country as that guard? Or perhaps were the other failed circuits >all seemingly unrelated to the guard? I haven't the foggiest. I don't even know over how much time tor has been calculating the ratio before it decides to issue that message. It could be minutes, hours, days... The failures I started getting with 0.2.3.18-rc were really irritating, but I didn't have a clue to follow until switching to 0.2.3.20-rc, which issues the interesting messages. That prompted me to turn INFO logging back on and watch what happened when I ran that script. Between the log and looking at arm's display of current circuit routes, I was able to see that nodes were being used that were supposed to have been excluded. > >As far as the ExcludeNodes - did you set StrictNodes at the same time? No. However, there are usually 800 - 900 guards active at any time these days, so I figured that excluding only the ones that gave me trouble would leave plenty of others available for selection. >Are you also a relay? Yes. See MYCROFTsOtherChild in the consensus, descriptors, or tor status pages. It's the same one I've been running for years, apart from short hiatuses in 2007 and 2008. Scott

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Tor Weather - Node Down
by torhoste＠tor.host-ed.me 12 Sep '12

12 Sep '12

Hi, this is my very first post to this list. I operate tor exit relays vks24784 and vks24949 and subscribed to Tor Weather Reports. Now, at Sun, September 2, 2012 12:17 am and Thu, September 6, 2012 12:33 am, I received "Node Down" Reports for one of the nodes, 1st report for vks24949, 2nd for vks24784. That said, I noticed that these event resets the respective uptime counters at Atlas web application to "zero" and the node would lose the already earned stable, guard, named, etc. flags for a certain time period. The problem is that both nodes definitely were online to the best of my knowledge (they are 24/7 actually), see http://tor.host-ed.me/nodes/ and official Atlas logs at https://atlas.torproject.org/#details/AAD948023527A6D33FAA96816E4B5F101A664… and https://atlas.torproject.org/#details/B41CBB97CF4DCFF724F272F28FD3F0D683C2F… I even checked the "uptime" through ssh and there hasn't been any reboots occurring. Also, I'm wondering what actually would happen to guard, stable, named, etc. flags if I'd actually need to reboot the nodes cause of maintenance? I feel it unfortunate to lose these flags (also for the Tor network itself) and would like to ask: 1. What does Tor Weather consider a "Node Down" event? 2. How long does it take to regain the mentioned flags? I.e. does the node start from scratch earning them (so to speak), i.e. does it take as long as initially? Last thing I'd like to ask in that context: Do these "Node Down" events and/or needed maintenance reboots have any effect on a potential Tor T-Shirt claim? I'd actually really like to make myself a communicative, green Tor advertising column at some point in time ;-) Thanks!

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GPG error
by Ottakar 11 Sep '12

11 Sep '12

Hi everyone, my node is actually down and when I want to update my debian, I' got a GPG error: root@foo:/home# apt-get update W: Une erreur s'est produite lors du contrôle de la signature. Le dépôt n'est pas mis à jour et les fichiers d'index précédents seront utilisés. Erreur de GPG : http://deb.torproject.org squeeze Release : Les signatures suivantes ne sont pas valables : KEYEXPIRED 1346668560 KEYEXPIRED 1346668560 KEYEXPIRED 1346668560 KEYEXPIRED 1346668560 W: Impossible de récupérer http://deb.torproject.org/torproject.org/dists/squeeze/Release W: Le téléchargement de quelques fichiers d'index a échoué, ils ont été ignorés, ou les anciens ont été utilisés à la place. Where can I find the procedure to update the GPG key? Thx

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Subsidizezed relay proposal
by Dude 11 Sep '12

11 Sep '12

I want to share my thoughts and get feedback on operating a sponsored dedicated exit relay. 0. register a domain name 1. set up a centos linux based dedicated server at a Tor compatible ISP in the USA a. get myself set up as abuse contact for my IPs (I have worked the abuse alias before) b. "10MB" net connection. Most 100MB give you around 9 MB actual and 10 MB give you 6MB actual 2. set up a 'mostly public' exit node and run it intermittently while I tune and debug it 3. operate node for a month before submitting receipts for funding 4. add more nodes if this works I realized I have no assets, so I am going to hold off from creating a LLC type company for financial protection. Are there any more specifics and how/when subsidies will be released? Cheers!

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Current state of v0.2.3.x IPv6 bridges?
by Steve Snyder 10 Sep '12

10 Sep '12

I'm wondering about the benefit of running abridge on an IPv6 address. Since the big announcement last December that v0.2.3.9 supports IPv6 addresses for bridges, I've read a few comments to the affect that BridgDB doesn't understand IPv6 addresses. So... what is the state of publishing IPv6 bridge addresses? Will clients requesting a bridge address ever be given an IPv6 address? Can a client specifically request an IPv6 address (or IPv4 address, for that matter)? Thanks.

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Repository
by Jörg Frings-Fürst 06 Sep '12

06 Sep '12

Hi, I got the following error on every update. Pls fix it.. Jörg Frings-Fürst W: A error occurred during the signature verification. The repository is not updated and the previous index files will be used. GPG error: http://deb.torproject.org precise InRelease: The following signatures were invalid: KEYEXPIRED 1346668560 KEYEXPIRED 1346668560 KEYEXPIRED 1346668560 KEYEXPIRED 1346668560 > > W: Failed to fetch http://deb.torproject.org/torproject.org/dists/precise/InRelease > > W: Some index files failed to download. They have been ignored, or old ones used instead. >

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Operating a sponsored relay II
by Dude 31 Aug '12

31 Aug '12

My research is telling me I can not host a Tor relay at most retail ISPs because it is perceived as an "open relay" and these cause a lot of headaches for ISPs. So that leaves colo, but this gets expensive fast. This is very expensive outside the USA. Could I work as an agent of torservers.net? Is there a FAQ listing friendly ISPs? I understand the need for documentation and receipts for expenses. It might be helpful to get quarterly payments instead of monthly. I was thinking of an USA Llc. for protection. Looking at my notes I now remember an 's-corp' is better for a single owner (simple corporation). Here is a link to the US commercial code for s-corps: http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/USCODE-2011-title26/html/USCODE-2011-title26-s… I would be happy to document the process of setting up a US s-corp. if I create one. Cheers!

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Has anyone had any success running a relay on an mk802?
by someonelse 30 Aug '12

30 Aug '12

I currently run a relay at home during the day, but would like to run one 24/7. Has anyone had any success doing this with the mk802 or similar device? This site seems to say it's possible: http://romanrm.ru/en/a10/mk802-server "It can run Web/Mail/DNS/DHCP/VPN/Jabber/Mumble/Tor servers..." I think this may work for me since I prefer Debian, something inexpensive (~$70 qualifies), low power and want to run wired Internet. If not the mk802 or mk802-II, then what device would do this better for around the same price? Thanks, Someonelse

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Operating a sponsored relay
by Dude 30 Aug '12

30 Aug '12

Hello, I have experience working at ISPs supporting dedicated servers and am interested in operating a sponsored relay. Potential issues I see: # A true 100mb network connection is going to be expensive. Often a 24 port edge switch has just one 100mb uplink port. # As an operator, I might want an LLC to protect me from personal liability in the USA. # Ideally an ISP outside the USA would be used so the server is in a different legal jurisdiction than the operator. This would make payment and communication more difficult. At this time I imagine a server with an encrypted file system and long term log retention disabled. Reasonably hardened OS, but nothing too exotic. I think $100 a month above other costs would be fair. But I do not know how much attention a node would require once it was set up. If it requires a lot of time, more compensation would be in order. I am not looking to make a lot of money doing this, but I can not do it gratis. Cheers, John

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Re: [tor-relays] "Relay info kit" for Tor exits at universities
by Scott Bennett 25 Aug '12

25 Aug '12

On Sat, 11 Aug 2012 04:08:57 -0400 Roger Dingledine <arma(a)mit.edu> wrote: >I've spent the week talking to my contacts at US universities, to get >them to spin up fast exits. Currently the fast exits in North American >universities are: > >- University of Waterloo (Ian Goldberg) >- Boston University (Leo Reyzin) > >We're now on track to add: >- UPenn (Matt Blaze) >- UMichigan (Alex Halderman) >- CMU (Nicolas Christin) >- Georgia Tech (Dave Dagon) > >and I have professors from George Mason, Illinois, UNM, UMN, UConn, >UW, and others looking into it. > >Wendy and I are talking to some lawyers to try to write up a short >(several paragraph) document targeted toward the university's general >counsel, for preemptive use by the computer science professors who plan >to run the Tor exit. > >What else should go in a "so you want to run a big exit" info kit? > >- Pointers to the legal-faq (and dmca template) and abuse-faq. > >- Pointers to Mike's blog entry: >https://blog.torproject.org/blog/tips-running-exit-node-minimal-harassment >and my old Tor-at-universities wiki page: >https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/wiki/doc/TorGuideUniversities > >- Is there some document suggesting how to SWIP your address, and >explaining the importance of having your abuse mails go to someplace >other than your general university abuse team? It's touched on in several >places but we should make it even clearer. > >- What are the good answers now to "what hardware should I use, and how >should I configure it?" I've been telling people they'll be happiest with >Debian, and that something 64-bit and/or with AESNI support will be best. Fast relays use lots of memory, which vastly worsens the effects of the "small TLB" problem inherent in all modern CPUs, so running a fast relay on a FreeBSD kernel with superpages support enabled is likely to reduce considerably the CPU load for the traffic served, which is more or less equivalent to increasing the traffic capacity for any given CPU speed. Superpages support has been available since 7.2 for i386 and amd64 platforms, but will likely be available on other platforms at some point. Support on another platform was supposed to appear in 9.0, IIRC, but I don't remember which (ia64?). I'm not sure what will be in later releases, but my understanding is that the kernel development team planned to add superpages support eventually to the rest of the FreeBSD-supported hardware platforms that are capable of it (not, for example, powerpc because that hardware does not support the multiple page sizes involved). Rather than risk triggering OS religious wars here, it might be better to limit OS recommendations to merely which to avoid because they have limitations likely to prevent successful operation of a fast exit node (e.g., non-server versions of Windows). The administrators of fast nodes already know what their current setups are and the current knowledge bases of their staffs are. > >- [remainder deleted -SB] Scott Bennett, Comm. ASMELG, CFIAG ********************************************************************** * Internet: bennett at cs.niu.edu * *--------------------------------------------------------------------* * "A well regulated and disciplined militia, is at all times a good * * objection to the introduction of that bane of all free governments * * -- a standing army." * * -- Gov. John Hancock, New York Journal, 28 January 1790 * **********************************************************************

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"Relay info kit" for Tor exits at universities
by Roger Dingledine 24 Aug '12

24 Aug '12

I've spent the week talking to my contacts at US universities, to get them to spin up fast exits. Currently the fast exits in North American universities are: - University of Waterloo (Ian Goldberg) - Boston University (Leo Reyzin) We're now on track to add: - UPenn (Matt Blaze) - UMichigan (Alex Halderman) - CMU (Nicolas Christin) - Georgia Tech (Dave Dagon) and I have professors from George Mason, Illinois, UNM, UMN, UConn, UW, and others looking into it. Wendy and I are talking to some lawyers to try to write up a short (several paragraph) document targeted toward the university's general counsel, for preemptive use by the computer science professors who plan to run the Tor exit. What else should go in a "so you want to run a big exit" info kit? - Pointers to the legal-faq (and dmca template) and abuse-faq. - Pointers to Mike's blog entry: https://blog.torproject.org/blog/tips-running-exit-node-minimal-harassment and my old Tor-at-universities wiki page: https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/wiki/doc/TorGuideUniversities - Is there some document suggesting how to SWIP your address, and explaining the importance of having your abuse mails go to someplace other than your general university abuse team? It's touched on in several places but we should make it even clearer. - What are the good answers now to "what hardware should I use, and how should I configure it?" I've been telling people they'll be happiest with Debian, and that something 64-bit and/or with AESNI support will be best. - We should set up a mailing list for university relay operators to share experiences and feel solidarity. I'll also encourage them to sign up here. We might also post a list of university Tor exits somewhere obvious, so new ones can gain more confidence in the idea. What other resources exist already that would be especially useful for new fast exits? What resources don't exist but should? --Roger

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exit node with different IP address
by cmeclax-sazri 23 Aug '12

23 Aug '12

I rebooted my computer with a freshly compiled kernel and world, brought up my browser, and before doing something where I need to know my IP address is hidden, brought up check.torproject.org. It said "You are not using Tor." But the address is 217.148.84.179, which isn't anywhere near me. So I brought up torstatus.blutmagie.de and searched the page. It lists AMORPHIS at 217.148.84.180. I don't see ExitAddress in torrc. Should there be one? cmeclax

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hi
by P.H. H 19 Aug '12

19 Aug '12

tor-relays(a)lists.torproject.org

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Notice of disruption of service
by Dennis Ljungmark 18 Aug '12

18 Aug '12

Hi all, I'm sad to say that I've been forced to disable three of our six relays, and reduce the others to minimal transfer speeds. We are currently being exhorted by our ISP, Bahnhof for a huge amount of money due to "excessive traffic" in order to sign us up on a new contract. This should serve as a warning call for people who are using or considering to use Bahnhof. Contact take(a)deklomp.se for more information about the case. The affected nodes are: ( Reduced speed ) depth 9EDB9965625A06F41D84581BF66CAF7D79919DC4 vandalise 8D3E65A90F455E77DEFAA9ACEAFD7392221E2C9C deklomp1 0A9CB1B43C780634B80390A9093C7490CB503880 ( Offline until the issues are resolved ) deklomp2 EFA394DD66A8147AAEF3604B37CBF77DE2C7D895 deklomp3 FB5BECE11DDCE8444CB2EB0A41303DBB7093EA7A deklomp4 2403121E35A830A7131C388EB643915F06842FB4 Regards, D.S. "Spider" Ljungmark

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Help the Tor Project by running a fast unpublished bridge
by Roger Dingledine 17 Aug '12

17 Aug '12

Hi folks, In addition to the "get many fast exit relays" plan, that same funder (Voice of America) wants us to run a pile of fast stable unpublished bridges. We'll give the bridge addresses out manually to their target users over the coming months. The constraints are: * 100mbit+ connectivity, though in practice I expect they will spend most of their time doing far less than that. * No more than 2 bridges per /24. If you're running fast (100mbit+) exits (which is more important), exits on that /24 count toward this 2. * No more than 7 bridges total per data center. If you could set up 1 (or 2, or 20) and send me the address(es) privately, that would be grand. We do have some funding for this, but I'm hoping that we can get enough volunteers so we can put the money toward more fast exits and better QA and build automation for the Tor bundles. So if you have good connectivity but can't run an exit, this is a great way to contribute. The torrc lines we want include: ORPort 443 # or whichever port you like BridgeRelay 1 PublishServerDescriptor 0 RelayBandwidthRate 11875 KB # or more RelayBandwidthBurst 12500 KB # or more If you have 3+ IP addresses and want to get fancy, you might set OutboundBindAddress to a different IP address than you tell me, to avoid some of the bridge enumeration attacks listed at https://blog.torproject.org/blog/research-problems-ten-ways-discover-tor-br… Later I might ask you to set up some sort of server-side pluggable transport like obfsproxy, but there's no rush on that. Long-term, "get a bunch of fast bridges on individual static IP addresses" is not a very good plan. Instead, we plan to focus on borrowing whole netblocks from ISPs and other people who aren't using them, and redirecting the addresses en masse into a bridge. You can start playing around with this idea by using an iptables rule rather than a bridge: /sbin/iptables -t nat -A PREROUTING -p tcp -d 18.244.0.114 --dport 80 -j DNAT --to-destination 128.31.0.34:9032 if the bridge listens on 128.31.0.34:9032 and you want me to advertise the address 18.244.0.114:80. Let me know if you have any questions or I can help clarify anything. Thanks! --Roger

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Exit Port Usage Statistics for "Allow all" nodes
by Moritz Bartl 16 Aug '12

16 Aug '12

Hi, At torservers.net, we run some large exit relays with an "allow all except port 25" policy. These are statistics from ARM showing exit port statistics of a fast exit running for seven hours at 30-40 MB/s: 443 HTTPS 17650 (%55) 80 HTTP 10625 (%33) 8344 739 (%2) 8333 84 51413 45 6881 Torrent 38 8337 29 993 IMAPS 23 45682 18 182 16 9001 16 4662 eMule 14 4661 12 -- Moritz Bartl https://www.torservers.net/

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Using aes-in in Tor
by tor-admin 15 Aug '12

15 Aug '12

Hi, I am struggling setting up aes-in support with Ubuntu 12.04 LTS. I enabled aes in bios. cat /proc/cpuinfo shows the aes flag. #lsmod |grep aes aesni_intel 55664 0 cryptd 20530 1 aesni_intel aes_x86_64 17208 1 aesni_intel shows that the module is loaded. But #openssl engine (rsax) RSAX engine support (dynamic) Dynamic engine loading support shows not the aes engine. My openssl version is #openssl version OpenSSL 1.0.1 14 Mar 2012 Can someone give me a hint what I am doing wrong. Regards, Torland

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Unnamed flag
by kupo＠damnfbi.tk 15 Aug '12

15 Aug '12

Can anyone explain how to get the Unnamed flag for my node changed over to Named? -kupo

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Re: [tor-relays] Call for discussion: turning funding into more exit relays
by Martin Algö 15 Aug '12

15 Aug '12

Hi Roger, Thanks for your answer :) It's funny that you mention dfri.se, because they e-mailed me (and all swedish relay operators i believe) yesterday and I'm lurking in their IRC channel (and #tor) as I write this. I also managed to join the tor-relays list, so I've had a lot to read lately. I'm CC'ing this to them as well, so let's see if it gets to where it's supposed to. :) Cheers! //Martin 2012/8/14 Roger Dingledine <arma(a)mit.edu> > (Adding the tor-assistants cc back in -- I'm not so good at handling > mail to me directly, and tor-assistants is a closed list of other Tor > developers, so hopefully it isn't too impolite to add it.) > > On Tue, Jul 24, 2012 at 12:42:03PM +0200, Martin Algö wrote: > > Hello Roger, > > > > My answers first: > > > > - What do you currently pay for hosting/bandwidth, and how much bandwidth > > do you get for that? > > I'm running my relay from home. I have a 100Mbit connection and for that > i > > pay roughly $65 USD (450 SEK). > > > > - Is it a stable hosting situation? For example, how do they handle > > abuse complaints so far? > > So far I've been running my relay for about 18 months. The Tor server > uses > > a total of about 50Mbit constantly in both directions (I limited it > because > > I want some bandwidth for myself as well) and I have not heard a peep > from > > my ISP. It should be noted that my ISP (Bahnhof, Sweden) have been known > > for engaging in discussions about privacy in general and trying to > protect > > their users from things like ACTA/IPRED. They even supply their own > > anonymity VPN service. > > I tried contacting them once to talk about Tor, but whoever at helpdesk > > that got my email didn't know what I was talking about so I gave that up, > > thinking that I shouldnt rock the boat unless necessary. :) > > Great. I wish there were more people like you in Sweden. :) > > > - Is your hosting situation one where it could make sense for us to > > reimburse your bandwidth costs? (Some people have a deal through their > > employer, friend, etc where they don't pay for hosting.) > > Yes. In my case, I use half my bandwidth and so it would make sense to > pay > > me half my connection fee. Something that I would like much more though, > > would be a promise of economic assistance in case of juridical problems. > > The way i see it, I don't give any money to charity, such as Red Cross > etc. > > but I contribute bandwidth for a value of $30-35 every month to help > > anonymity and uncensored access to the internet for user that need it. > > (Along with users that use it for bad things as well, but that is a > > tradeoff I'm willing to make for now.) > > Good idea. Do you know about dfri.se? They are running some fast exit > relays in Sweden in an organized way. I bet they could help with the > legal side. I agree that it would be great to have some equivalent of the > Tor Legal FAQ written with Sweden in mind. I'm cc'ing Linus (from dfri) > in case he has any thoughts here. > > > relay if you didn't have to pay for it? > > This is an interesting question! Maybe I could buy a VPS somewhere? I'm > the > > local "IT guy" at my office so I might be able to buy a separate > connection > > there and even get some cheap hardware. This defenitely could require > some > > thinking on my part. > > Let us know if anything comes to mind, and what we can do to help. > > > - What else should we be asking here? :) > > What do the relay operators want? :) > > As stated above, for me it would mean much more to have some legal help > to > > fall back on if (when) shit hits the fan. I'm not sure, but I'm guessing > > that many would-be high speed relay operators don't run relays because of > > possible legal imlications. > > Right. Do you know good Swedish lawyers who might be able to help > clarify how the laws there work? > > > I would love to join the discussion on the tor-relays list. I already > > registered, but I never got around to using any mailing lists before, so > > I'm not sure how to respond to your thread without breaking anything. > Help > > a n00b will you? :) > > Happy to help. I'd say just send the mail and see what happens. If > you start with "I run a fast exit relay, and", I expect people will be > very friendly. > > Thanks! > --Roger > >

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Sizing, Pricing, Effect
by Dennis Ljungmark 07 Aug '12

07 Aug '12

Hi! [Hypothetical part below] We have been involved with our ISP and there may ( discussions will have to wait until after summer vacation is over when we can find real numbers and answers) but it looks as if it'd cost us ~800€ / month to go from ~1GBit to 10GBit connection. If funding was available, this would be 9.5 GBit dedicated to Tor as Exit node + relays depending on what needs people have. [End hypothetical] Even without funding, we are still looking at transforming (some) of our existing relay nodes into Exit nodes, and there's a few practical questions here. Would you rather have several smaller ones, spread out via DHCP allocated ranges, or is it preferrable to have one or a handful of "larger" exit nodes? Regards, D.S. Ljungmark

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tcmalloc in FreeBSD
by Jordi Espasa Clofent 06 Aug '12

06 Aug '12

Hi all, From time to time my tor node (minibofh) stopped to work properly; since it's a tiny FreeBSD VPS, the root origin was some CPU over-consumption. I'm taking some actions to fix it (more swap, freeing CPU from another services... etc). The FreeBSD tor port offers to you the tcmalloc compilation option, so I had some fun reading this interesting paper: http://goog-perftools.sourceforge.net/doc/tcmalloc.html I recompiled the tor port but just using the tcmalloc option. Actually, now I got the google-perftool package and, obviously, the tcmalloc library: mb# pkg_info | grep google google-perftools-1.8.3 Fast, multi-threaded malloc() and nifty performance analysi mb# pkg_info -L google-perftools-1.8.3 | grep malloc.so /usr/local/lib/libtcmalloc.so /usr/local/lib/libtcmalloc.so.2 But, when I'm checking which libraries the tor binary is using, I get: mb# ldd /usr/local/bin/tor /usr/local/bin/tor: libz.so.5 => /lib/libz.so.5 (0x281aa000) libm.so.5 => /lib/libm.so.5 (0x281bc000) libevent-2.0.so.6 => /usr/local/lib/event2/libevent-2.0.so.6 (0x2844e000) libssl.so.7 => /usr/local/lib/libssl.so.7 (0x28489000) libcrypto.so.7 => /usr/local/lib/libcrypto.so.7 (0x284d7000) libthr.so.3 => /lib/libthr.so.3 (0x281df000) libc.so.7 => /lib/libc.so.7 (0x28090000) So... I understand that the tor binary is actually NOT using the new tcmalloc library. Am I wrong? PS. I adding a CC to tor FreeBSD port mantainer.

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Re: [tor-relays] [tor-assistants] Call for discussion: turning funding into more exit relays
by Andrew Beveridge 05 Aug '12

05 Aug '12

---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: TechFix LTD <andrew(a)techfixuk.com> Date: Wed, Aug 1, 2012 at 8:25 AM Subject: Re: [tor-assistants] Call for discussion: turning funding into more exit relays To: Roger Dingledine <arma(a)mit.edu> Cc: tor-relays(a)lists.torproject.org On Wed, Aug 1, 2012 at 5:03 AM, Roger Dingledine <arma(a)mit.edu> wrote: > Sounds like you should bump it up to 100mbit then. ;) > Heh, I've just done exactly that - well, I've raised the bandwidth limits in my torrc to values higher than what my ISP caps my connection at. Just to clarify though, is there any technical reason why it would be better practice to have a realistic configured limit (like 12.5MB) as the limit rather than something higher than that which I know will likely never actually be possible? I simply want to use all the bandwidth available. I'll monitor the websites I'm hosting from this server closely for a while and see if they are noticeably affected by this at all. They are hosted from a separate VM and I'm not sure how the OpenVZ host schedules packets going through the virtual network adapters, but I'm hoping that tor can run at maximum capacity most of the time while only adding perhaps a second or two of load time onto the websites. > You can see on http://atlas.torproject.org/#details/FA02311AF49EB663CA2685A8604C403A9E10E6… that there are periods where your rate limiting is bottlenecking traffic. I presume you're referring to the busy periods where the graph clips? Sure, but as my company pays for the server entirely, if it were to not function for its intended purpose (basic hosting of small-time client websites) I would have a problem. I was worried that allowing tor to use all my bandwidth would cause that, but I hadn't actually experimented with it to see - I'm doing that now! > > I definitely don't want Tor to be in the middle of the transactions -- if Tor pays the bills directly, that's too much like being the relay operator. One nice situation would be for you to produce receipts showing expenses, and then we reimburse those costs. It requires fronting a bit of money on your part, but that's part of saving the world, yes? :) > Ultimately, we're also going to want to look into reducing overhead on Tor's side from sending out money. If we have to write and mail 50 checks every month, that's going to waste a lot of somebody's time. Maybe that means Paypal is the way to go. Maybe it means we send some money in bulk to Zwiebelfreunde, and they do intra-Europe wire transfers to the other Europeans (though I admit maybe that just shifts the time-wasting). Lots of options there. What would be best for you? Good point. I guess the solution which seems logical to me would be a standing order from Tor into my company account for the amount mentioned above, with my OVH invoice emailed to you as justification. As the amount would not change from month to month, a standing order could be set up once and never require any more attention unless I got cut off by OVH. Presumably that would require a european bank account under Tor's control - I'm not sure about how your connection with the Wau Holland Foundation works, but are they perhaps able to help with european transfers? If that is too awkward, then sure, PayPal (or one of several other e-Payment systems) is a fairly easy way to go about it, with the loss of a few % of the payment amount. My business currently uses PayPal for all payments from US entities, simply because it is easy. > All of this said, don't go out and start spending money quite yet. We should figure out these logistics first. And Tor should get a bit more of a handle on what this diversity thing should mean. And I should get buy-in from other Tor people for my plans here. :) > --Roger > I'm going to try my best to run my current node as a full 100Mbit node from now on anyway, even if that means paying for more traffic. As soon as things are ready at your end, I'm ready to start a second identical exit as described in my previous mail. I'm going to try and start looking for other providers, but I don't want to reinvent the wheel - is https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/wiki/doc/GoodBadISPs kept up to date by many people here? Perhaps we could develop a slightly better system for tracking good/bad ISP experiences than a flat wiki page with countries? So my node has been running without any bandwidth restriction for a few days now, and I'm not noticing any critical speed problems from the websites I host. The latency drops significantly when the node is pushing traffic at max bandwidth, but that doesn't seem to be very often ( https://atlas.torproject.org/#details/FA02311AF49EB663CA2685A8604C403A9E10E… ). So, as it stands right now, I'm happy to run that node for free as I already have been. If the OVH manager decides I am very close to my initial 10TB traffic cap, I will have to limit the node again unless I can get some funding (£9-£18) for another 20TB each month. Out of curiosity, can anyone explain to me why my bandwidth /hasn't/ been maxed out the past few days? (at least, according to Atlas) -- * Andrew Beveridge, **Tor lurker / sympathizer / advocate, exit node maintainer.* Director / Computer Repair Technician @ TechFix LTD [ http://www.techfixuk.com] Freelance Web Developer @ [http://www.andrewbeveridge.co.uk] Tel/Fax: +44 (0) 1383269735 | * Email: tor(a)techfixuk.com <andrew(a)techfixuk.com> * * 5 Drum Road, Kelty, KY4 0DQ, Scotland *

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Re: [tor-relays] task-6329 / tor relays stats patch
by Karsten Loesing 03 Aug '12

03 Aug '12

Hi Michael, I'm cc'ing tor-relays for the discussion here, because I figured if you're okay with sharing the patch, you're probably also okay with a public discussion of it. :) On 7/21/12 4:19 PM, Michael Zeltner wrote: > Hi Karsten, > > On my way out, and I would otherwise forget but here you go, maybe you'd like > this. > > Best from Metalab/Vienna, > Michael Thanks for sending the patch! Most of it looks good, but I took out the --family-for-fp option which, I think, isn't entirely correct. This option looks for relays having the given fingerprint in their family line, but it doesn't cross-check if the given relay has those relays in its family line, too. The option also doesn't look at nicknames (of relays with the Named flag) in family lines, which means it might miss some family members. Oh, and it would be really cool to have a -F or --by-family option to aggregate by families. I wonder if we should do the whole family-calculating business inside Onionoo and add a family_number field which has the same number for relays in the same family. The script could then look up the family number of the given relay and display all relays with that family number. Would that make sense? Want to extend the script once Onionoo has such a field? Thanks! Karsten

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Re: [tor-relays] Call for discussion: turning funding into more exit relays
by Andrew Beveridge 03 Aug '12

03 Aug '12

On Mon, Jul 23, 2012 at 9:22 PM, Roger Dingledine <arma(a)mit.edu> wrote: > Hello Andrew, > > I wanted to draw your attention to a thread I've started on the tor-relays > list: > https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-relays/2012-July/001433.html > > Hi Roger, I'm not too familiar with mailing lists, so hopefully I'm not top posting or replying in the wrong place here. I'm simply replying to your email in Gmail with a CC to the tor-relays list. Sorry for the late reply, I've been away with no internet access for the past week. > In short, we have a funder who wants to sponsor more and faster Tor > exits, and we're brainstorming about how to use the money in a way that > makes the network stronger but also doesn't screw up the "community" > side of the Tor relay operator community. The first step is collecting > facts about the current fast Tor exit relays. > > Great! I've not been vocal in the Tor community before now, but I'd like to start, and I'm certainly happy to share my experience / thoughts. > - What do you currently pay for hosting/bandwidth, and how much bandwidth > do you get for that? > This is a complicated question, because I run a single Tor exit in a VPS on my company dedicated server. I run a local company doing computer repair and web development, and lease a single dedicated server from OVH (more specifically, Kimsufi) for a total of £64 a month (inc. VAT). That gets me the Kimsufi 16G dedicated server, a RIPE block of 4 extra IPs, and an external 2TB HDD. 100Mbit pipe, 10TB/month bandwidth. £0.87/TB if I go over that, so if I were to max out the bandwidth for an entire month, using around 30TB traffic, I would have to pay about £18 on top for the extra bandwidth. However, according to the OVH manager I never seem to go anywhere near the traffic limit, despite having had the exit set to use 50Mbit/s constantly for the past 3 months. As far as I'm concerned, it costs me nothing to run this exit node - my company needs the dedicated server regardless, and none of the ~50 websites I host use enough traffic to be affected by the fact that my server is using half it's available bandwidth for Tor. In an ideal world, I would rent a second Kimsufi server just for Tor purposes, which would cost £36/month (Kimsufi 16G) + £4/month (RIPE block). Therefore, if I were to participate in this experiment, I would say *£40 GBP / month* would get *10TB of 100 Mbit/s* exit traffic. Additional *20TB* traffic could be purchased for *£18 / month*, which would bring the maximum cost to *$92 USD / month.* > - Is it a stable hosting situation? For example, how do they handle > abuse complaints so far? > This is an important one, because OVH are not Tor-friendly. In fact, they aren't very friendly in general! Several people told me it was very foolish to run an exit node on an OVH server, since as soon as OVH get even a whiff of a complaint, they are quick to suspend. All my company-hosted websites are hosted on a second redundant server with another ISP so I'm not worried if OVH do find out and take that route and cut me off. I'm also not worried about legal issues, as I have positioned myself as a web-hosting customer of my own PLC, with terms and conditions absolving my PLC of any legal risks. In the off chance some legal authority were to come to my flat in britain, they would find no electrical equipment to seize as I own only a single laptop and it usually lives in my car or partners house anyway! As I have only been running this exit for 3 months, I am far from an authoritative voice on the issue of abuse complaints, but the most important thing is definitely SWIP as far as I can see it - the IP address I use for the exit is one from the RIPE block I lease and as such the abuse email is my own. I've had about 20 abuse report emails so far, all automated (by the looks of things) from some system within the brazilian government, following an Sqlmap SQL injection scan/attack on a few government sites. I replied to the first one with the standard template, got no reply, haven't worried about it since. I reckon if OVH found out I was running an exit they would be likely to cut me off fairly swiftly, but they don't seem to pay much attention to Kimsufi customers since it is their budget range with very slow (week+ per ticket) support and presumably low margins. I think that and me as the primary abuse contact for the IP mean it's likely to stay up for a while. If I do get any hassle, I'll defend it as far as I can from a business perspective, but if they don't give in I'll likely just cancel it and open a new Kimsufi lease - I very much doubt anyone is checking new invoices for similar details to past customers. > - Is your hosting situation one where it could make sense for us to > reimburse your bandwidth costs? (Some people have a deal through their > employer, friend, etc where they don't pay for hosting.) > I don't think so - as explained above, at present I don't pay a penny, but I can only offer about half of my available bandwidth as the server is used for many purposes. If I were to participate in this experiment, it would probably mean purchasing another Kimsufi just for this, and the cost of the server itself would be what I would be looking for financial help with. > - Are you in a position to get more bandwidth if you pay more? At what > rates? We're most interested in sponsoring >=100mbit relays. > Unfortunately the Kimsufi servers are capped at 100Mbit regardless of whether you want to pay more. OVH obviously have Gbit and 10Gbit servers available, but they are too expensive for this. There are obviously far better alternatives for higher bandwidth servers - a quick look tells me I could get a 1Gbit dedicated server with 100TB traffic from Leaseweb for €99 ($121) / month, so obviously if the money is there, more bandwidth and traffic can be had. I guess it boils down to how many people you can get interested in this - if plenty, lots of 100Mbit servers is presumably better than a few 10Gbit ones for the money as it aids network diversity, even if (worst case) they are all hosted by the same provider. > - Do you have other locations in mind where you would run another exit > relay if you didn't have to pay for it? > Definitely! As far as I'm concerned, I am not worried about legal issues as long as I can purchase hosting through my business and SWIP the IP, and I have plenty of free time to spend configuring servers and responding to abuse emails, so if I had the money I would happily be running exit nodes in any country I could find a hosting provider in - money is the hurdle for me. > - What else should we be asking here? :) > One thing which I haven't seen discussed yet is how funding would actually be connected with operators - I'm not sure if you were thinking about the funder(s) directly sending money to operators, or if The Tor Project Inc would be acting as a middleman? What money transfer mechanisms would be safe to use, how would you verify that the money was going to the right person, would The Tor Project Inc receive invoices directly from hosting companies or would operators email copies of invoices to someone and then some money would turn up in their bank accounts? What about PayPal, etc? Just a few thoughts :) Thanks! > --Roger Thanks for inviting me to share my thoughts on this! -Andrew

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Domain name based policies (was: Call for discussion: turning funding into more exit relays)
by Nicolas Braud-Santoni 01 Aug '12

01 Aug '12

2012/8/1 Roger Dingledine <arma(a)mit.edu>: > On Tue, Jul 31, 2012 at 11:21:01AM +0100, mick wrote: >> Question for tor developers. How hard would it be to change the logic >> (and syntax) of exit policy in tor to allow domain based formulations >> like: >> >> reject *.gmail.com >> reject *aol.com > > Very hard. > > https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/wiki/doc/TorFAQ#Exitpoliciesshould… Hi, While I see how allowing wildcards and domains in policies would be more than challenging, wouldn't it be possible to : - resolve domain-names at Tor startup, and get all associated A and AAAA records - Repeat when record's TTL is reached. Of course, it wouldn't work for sites that don't advertise all their IPs. It would also require the Exit node's operator to run some DNS resolver (or trust an external one), but locally running unbound (for example) is quite simple. Moreover, the risk evoked in the FAQ is already present : if I poison an exit node's DNS resolver, wouldn't I be able to replace nytimes.com A record with some bogon, like 0.0.0.0 ? Nicolas

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