- tor-relays - lists.torproject.org

Too Many Connections
by Jeff Teitel 15 Mar '23

15 Mar '23

My node is overloaded with connections. Conntrack.sh shows count: 65535. By far the majority (50k+) are to/from my own IP. This sometimes makes my node unreachable. And now it is reporting the StaleDesc flag. There is nothing else running on this node (except bind9). I've already set up tor-ddos. What else can I do? -- Jeff Teitel e-Mail: Jeff(a)Teitel.net Mobile: +1-202-271-1238 (he/his)

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Relay requirements
by Sydney 10 Mar '23

10 Mar '23

Newbie here. No network experience but already running 2 TOR instances: 1 TOR service + 1 bridge. I would like to "upgrade" to TOR relays but have a few questions relating to hardware needs. The [TOR-friendly] ISP I'm looking at have these 4 offers available: [1] 1 core @ 3.1GHz 1 GB RAM 10 TB/mo @ 5 Gbps BW [2] 1 core @ 3.1GHz 2 GB RAM10 TB/mo @ 5 Gbps BW [3] 2 core @ 3.1GHz4 GB RAM20 TB/mo @ 5 Gbps BW [4] 3 core @ 3.1GHz 12 GB RAM30 TB/mo @ 5 Gbps BW From [relay requirements](https://community.torproject.org/relay/relays-requirements/), my understanding is that [1] is what is expected for a guard or middle relay and [2] for an exit relay. My preferred choice at the moment is [3] where I would like to have 3 relays (one of each type; 3.5 GB RAM needed). Each relay would be limited to, say, 6.6 TB/mo BW. This would allow me to experiment and get used to the network and its requirements. My questions is about future increase. If I want to increase my offer to the TOR network I could: - Negotiate with my ISP to increase my BW to 30 TB/mo while still running on [3] and increase each BW limit to 10 TB/mo; - Move my 3 relays on [4] and increase each BW limit to 10 TB/mo; - Move my 3 relays on [4], add 2 IP addresses and 6 relays (2 of each type; 10.5 GB RAM needed total), and limit each relay to 3.3 TB/mo. I guess my fundamental question is what is the advantage of running multiple relays of the same type, on the same server? I see some operators running dozens of them, all in the same country, same ISP. Why not just a single relay running with a large capacity? Also, is there a requirement for the number of relays per core? (Maybe this is the answer to my question.) I know my bridge is currently keeping one core of my 2-core server constantly under load. Thank in advance.

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Draft workshop submission "Running a high-performance pluggable transports Tor bridge"
by David Fifield 07 Mar '23

07 Mar '23

Linus Nordberg and I have been working together to run the main Snowflake bridge since April 2022. We are preparing a short paper (4 pages) for the FOCI workshop (https://foci.community/) on the special procedures required to operate a bridge that gets the large volume of traffic that a Snowflake bridge does. This is a draft of the submission: https://www.bamsoftware.com/papers/pt-bridge-hiperf/pt-bridge-hiperf.202303… https://www.bamsoftware.com/papers/pt-bridge-hiperf/pt-bridge-hiperf.202303… I am posting the draft here to see if anyone has feedback or comments. If you do, our submission deadline is 2023-03-15. The main ideas were worked out in a thread on this very list: https://forum.torproject.net/t/tor-relays-how-to-reduce-tor-cpu-load-on-a-s… The core problem is that a single tor process is limited to a single CPU core. The main fix is to run multiple tor processes, and synchronize their identity and onion keys externally. It has been essential to enable scaling in the Snowflake bridge; but the same trick may be useful (minus the pluggable transport part) for other relays that process a much larger amount of traffic than average, such as large exit relays. (Though it's not clear that one exit with 2× the capacity is really any different than 2 exits in the same family.) This is also somewhat related to the current discussion about increasing the limit on the number of relays per IP address, which is a concession to the limited scalability of one tor process: https://bugs.torproject.org/tpo/core/tor/40744 > While this is great in general, it also adds significant complexity > for Tor operators since Tor does not scale well on multi-core CPU's. > In order to effectively use a modern server with a large amount of > threads, you would need to run many Tor relays.

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D5A3882CBDBE4CAD2F9DDA2AB80FE761BEDC3F11 is spoofing my contact info
by lists＠for-privacy.net 06 Mar '23

06 Mar '23

This is _not_ my relay: https://metrics.torproject.org/rs.html#details/D5A3882CBDBE4CAD2F9DDA2AB80F… https://nusenu.github.io/OrNetStats/w/relay/D5A3882CBDBE4CAD2F9DDA2AB80FE76… -- ╰_╯ Ciao Marco! Debian GNU/Linux It's free software and it gives you freedom!

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Storing ed25519_master_id_secret_key[_encrypted] on a smartcard?
by telekobold 04 Mar '23

04 Mar '23

Dear fellow relay operators, currently, I'm operating a Tor relay (Middle/Guard) and a Tor Bridge. Offline keys [1],[2] are a good way to secure a Tor relay, but I'm wondering if there is a standard way or something like a hacking guide how to store your ed25519_master_id_secret_key[_encrypted] on a smartcard or hardware token like a Nitrokey or Yubikey? This would even be more secure than storing it on a "normal" USB device. Unfortunately I have not found much about this on the internet. Kind regards telekobold [1] https://support.torproject.org/relay-operators/offline-ed25519/ [2] https://gitlab.torproject.org/legacy/trac/-/wikis/doc/TorRelaySecurity/Offl…

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RFC: does a private exit would work?
by Toralf Förster 04 Mar '23

04 Mar '23

tl;dr; restricted access + usage of an exit longer: An exit is sooner or later abused. A reduced exit policy does not prevent that. What about setup a tor exit relay with 'PublishServerDescriptor = 0' ? Having an access line like for bridges would restrict the access. An alternative could be a port knockig + iptables solution. Objections and comments are welcome. -- Toralf

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Preferred range for ephemeral ports
by binarynoise 03 Mar '23

03 Mar '23

Hello everyone, I just set up a snowflake proxy on my pi at home. Unfortunately I can only forward 255 ports to my pi (at once, or is there a way to trick my Fritz!box into allowing more?). Which is the preferred range for -ephemeral-ports-range when it needs to be restricted to allow the most users to connect? Is 60000:60250 ok? Greetings binarynoise

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removing tor versions from "recommended versions" before they reach EOL
by nusenu 01 Mar '23

01 Mar '23

Hi, the tor 0.4.5.x end of live versions are still on the recommended versions list: https://consensus-health.torproject.org/#recommendedversions > consensus client-versions 0.4.5.6, 0.4.5.7, 0.4.5.8, 0.4.5.9, 0.4.5.10, 0.4.5.11, 0.4.5.12, 0.4.5.14, 0.4.5.15, 0.4.5.16, 0.4.7.7, 0.4.7.8, 0.4.7.10, 0.4.7.11, 0.4.7.12, 0.4.7.13 > server-versions 0.4.5.6, 0.4.5.7, 0.4.5.8, 0.4.5.9, 0.4.5.10, 0.4.5.11, 0.4.5.12, 0.4.5.14, 0.4.5.15, 0.4.5.16, 0.4.7.7, 0.4.7.8, 0.4.7.10, 0.4.7.11, 0.4.7.12, 0.4.7.13 it would probably be better to stop recommending tor versions a month before they reach their eol date so relay operators get to see a log entry and have some time to react. kind regards, nusenu -- https://nusenu.github.io

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relay configuration not allowing optimal performance
by Relayer 26 Feb '23

26 Feb '23

I'm running a tor relay on some older hardware that I didn't want to discard when I could still put it so good use. Some details of the box are: -- CPU: Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU P8600 @ 2.40GHz -- RAM: 4GB -- ARCH: x86_64 -- HDD: 250GB -- OS: Ubuntu 22.04.1 I originally configured a single Tor instance IPv4 to run as a relay only (not as an exit, nor hosting a hidden service). I am also using the iptables rules from https://github.com/Enkidu-6/tor-ddos to minimize DDOS overhead (please advise if there are alternatives or additions to this). My original config seemed ok until I started seeing my CPU and RAM maxing out consistently so I throttled back with the following in my torrc: RelayBandwidthRate 100 KB # Throttle traffic to 100KB/s (800Kbps) RelayBandwidthBurst 200 KB # But allow bursts up to 200KB/s (1600Kbps) MaxAdvertisedBandwidth 1 MB My RAM usage now is only about 50% or marginally less of my total available. Here's how the metrics look lately: https://metrics.torproject.org/rs.html#details/38939B45237BA84941C74836349C… As you can see, the throughput rated dropped in half (that's when the graph drops on 2023-02-09). However, the volume continued to decline. Additionally, I'm unclear why my Middle Probability and Consensus Weight have both dropped to near 0%. Are those, in fact, where I want them? I'm monitoring with nyx and see I get some traffic through with no apparent errors or warnings. I am NOT seeing the CPU spikes any longer but I don't think I'm giving the most with my hardware. Questions: 1.) Is my tor service now misconfigured and not utilizing my hardware as best it could? 2.) Should my Consensus Weight and/or Middle Probability be higher? 3.) Should I consider running two tor instances? Nyx log snippet: 07:59:32 [NOTICE] Heartbeat: DoS mitigation since startup: 7 circuits killed with too many cells, 591 circuits rejected, 2 marked addresses, 0 marked addresses for max queue, 0 same address concurrent │ connections rejected, 0 connections rejected, 0 single hop clients refused, 19166 INTRODUCE2 rejected. [1 duplicate hidden] │ 07:59:32 [NOTICE] Since startup we initiated 0 and received 0 v1 connections; initiated 0 and received 0 v2 connections; initiated 0 and received 0 v3 connections; initiated 0 and received 57982 v4 │ connections; initiated 116266 and received 356623 v5 connections. │ 07:59:32 [NOTICE] Circuit handshake stats since last time: 3/3 TAP, 44849/44849 NTor. [1 duplicate hidden] │ 07:59:32 [NOTICE] While not bootstrapping, fetched this many bytes: 194128391 (server descriptor fetch); 7140 (server descriptor upload); 17539422 (consensus network-status fetch); 1794 (authority cert │ fetch); 2111765 (microdescriptor fetch) │ 07:59:32 [NOTICE] Heartbeat: Tor's uptime is 10 days 23:58 hours, with 179 circuits open. I've sent 34.83 GB and received 35.63 GB. I've received 444762 connections on IPv4 and 0 on IPv6. I've made │ 254336 connections with IPv4 and 0 with IPv6. [1 duplicate hidden] │ 01:59:32 [NOTICE] Since startup we initiated 0 and received 0 v1 connections; initiated 0 and received 0 v2 connections; initiated 0 and received 0 v3 connections; initiated 0 and received 56651 v4 │ connections; initiated 114326 and received 347071 v5 connections. │ 01:59:32 [NOTICE] While not bootstrapping, fetched this many bytes: 189431170 (server descriptor fetch); 7140 (server descriptor upload); 17131743 (consensus network-status fetch); 1794 (authority cert │ fetch); 2068377 (microdescriptor fetch) Thanks. Relayer1974

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Re: [tor-relays] Frantech (was Re: Confusing bridge signs)
by Jeff Teitel 26 Feb '23

26 Feb '23

On Fri, Feb 24, 2023 at 12:10 AM Marco wrote: > Yes, Frantech should actually be avoided. But in Miami there are few Tor > relays. A SLICE 512 for $2.00/m or $20.00/y is sufficient for a bridge. > https://buyvm.net/kvm-dedicated-server-slices/ Why should Frantech be avoided? Jeff Teitel

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Questions about Tor consensus weight & swag
by shruub 19 Feb '23

19 Feb '23

Hello, so my relay regulary gets overloaded, for what I can only assume is an hardware issue, (which I can't upgrade rn) since I already applied the tor anti ddos scripts. It seems to be able to recover, however with a lower Consensus Weight. I also (stupidly) tried to have a cron restarting my tor daemon daily which also resulted in the latter. So I wonder, if there is any way to have a relay run more stable and I suppose with a somewhat higher consensus weight (I can only asssume making some further changes in advertising bandwidth etc. My second question(s) is/are concerning the tor swag (I hope that's allowed to ask here). Firstly, what is the actual Speed requirement? In the tor ecosystem, every unit is MBs, and only on the swag site its KBs. But if my calculations are correct, 500KBs = 500000Bs = 0.5MBs which doesn't really make sence, imo(but I probably misscalculated somewhere). Secondly, does running mean it's uptime (aka Last Restarted) or the Time it was first seen? Sorry for the wall of text for not much information, and thanks a lot in advance for your replies! Best, shruub

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disable moderation on tor-relays again?
by nusenu 15 Feb '23

15 Feb '23

Hi, can we try to disable moderation on this list again and see how it goes? If it gets out of hand you can always move back to a moderated mode or a mode where the first email of a sender is moderated. kind regards, nusenu -- https://nusenu.github.io

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Use OutboundBindAddress on multi-instance tor servers
by nusenu 13 Feb '23

13 Feb '23

Hi, to reduce the risk that your multi-instance tor relay setup triggers false-positive filter thresholds on other relays, I recommend you make use of the OutboundBindAddress (or OutboundBindAddressOR) option and set it to the same IP as in the ORPort line. This will ensure that the outbound source IP will be the same when connecting to relays. The man page is not clear what tor's default without that setting is but I guess that would leave it to the OS to pick the source IP and that could result in all your tor's using the same source IP. relayor users are covered by default, no further action required. https://github.com/nusenu/ansible-relayor/blob/2bc62d62f85b62c51a38d9caa893… kind regards, nusenu -- https://nusenu.github.io

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publish current AuthDirMaxServersPerAddr limit?
by nusenu 13 Feb '23

13 Feb '23

Hi, would it be possible to publish the currently enforced value of AuthDirMaxServersPerAddr on some tpo website? Maybe consensus-health.tpo? kind regards, nusenu -- https://nusenu.github.io

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HowTo use relayor's Prometheus Integration (relayor v23.1.0)
by nusenu 12 Feb '23

12 Feb '23

Hi, relayor v23.1.0 is released. It comes with: * a minor security fix that needs manual intervention * support for more than 2 relays per IP * a major simplification for users of the prometheus integration. * removal of the tor_dedicatedExitIP feature. relayor now implements conf.d support for prometheus. This includes a few backward incompatible changes. Full Changelog: https://github.com/nusenu/ansible-relayor/releases/tag/v23.1.0 With the release I also published this guide that should help users get started with relayor's prometheus integration: https://github.com/nusenu/ansible-relayor/discussions/239 kind regards, nusenu

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Questions about 4 Relays per IP and the ddos mitigation scripts
by Chris Enkidu-6 08 Feb '23

08 Feb '23

Hello Everyone, Before I make changes to [my scripts](https://github.com/Enkidu-6/tor-ddos), I need to understand a few things and any help is much appreciated. - First, Does an Exit relay with zero Guard probability and zero middle relay probability need to initiate circuits with a Guard or middle relay and assuming it fails, would that affect my relay, relaying traffic to that Exit node as a part of my own circuit? To clarify the question, I have 2 Established connections to two Or Ports of an exit relay, the relay has no connections to me, Does that break anything? - I have a few Exit relays as permanent residents in my block list, not because I want them to be there but because, no matter how many times I remove them, day or night, they'll be back in seconds for making too many concurrent attempts. I'm assuming this is due to the fact that Exits are being used to attack other relays but I may be wrong which is why I need someone to clarify this for me and hence another reason for question one. - Each relay has Established connections to many other relays and if they're guard they will also have many connections to regular users and their Tor browsers until they have enough traffic to reach their MaxAdvertisedBandwidth. Obviously we don't Establish connections to all 6300 relays out there. So if we do not allow each IP more than two connections and they need 4, They'll have two from us and they'll move on to another relay and get the other two and get the job done and we will reach our Max Bandwidth anyway by accepting traffic from other relays. Diversity of relays as opposed to concentration of some relays. Am I correct in my assumption that this will have little to no effect on the health of the Tor network as a whole? Thanks for reading, I'm not going to make this longer than it is already.

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tor relay shows offline @ tor relay search while running
by theyarewatching＠disroot.org 03 Feb '23

03 Feb '23

Good day, My relay shows offline on the Relay Search page but according to NYX the relay is always running. I am running two relays on on Proxmox through my home network. Please inform me of what info/logs you may need to help diagnose this. Thank you for your time and help. TAW

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Ensure servers with >2 relays per IP do not get hit by rate limiting firewalls (by other relays)
by mail＠nothingtohide.nl 03 Feb '23

03 Feb '23

Hi Tor operators, Some of us took/will take advantage of the increase in allowed Tor relays per IPv4 address[1] to reduce costs for running Tor relays. This change will result in more relays sharing the same source IP address than before, which means other relays using rate limits on their ORPorts might need to make sure they do not unintentionally block relay to relay connectivity. Many relay operators deploy TCP SYN rate limiting packet filters theses days due to the ongoing DDoS issues. With the increase in Tor relays per IPv4 address, there might be more (new) connection coming from the same source IP. If you have strict TCP SYN rate limits per source IP, please ensure that this change does not result in blacklisting relay to relay traffic. You could for example whitelist relay IP addresses or have less strict rate limits for them. Thanks for reading, https://applied-privacy.net https://nothingtohide.nl [1] https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/core/tor/-/issues/40744

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4 relays per IP address are allowed from now (Feb 2023) on
by Georg Koppen 02 Feb '23

02 Feb '23

Hello everyone! You might recall that Tor is restricting the possible amount of Tor relays per IP address to 2, mainly for Sybil prevention reasons.[1] Given that Tor on the relay side at least is not multithreaded yet (and will likely not be for the near and medium future) that's wasting a lot of useful resources as many servers can easily handle more than 2 relays. Additionally, IPv4 addresses are scarce/expensive. I have good news for you, though. Thanks to a push by our relay operator community we raised that limit to 4 with the help of the directory authorities (by having set `AuthDirMaxServersPerAddr 4` on a majority of them) and, depending on how that experiment goes, consider raising it even to 8. Thus from now one should be able to run 4 relays per IP address. We are looking very much forward to seeing a bunch of additional relays entering the network and making it stronger. :) For more details, information and discussion see: tor#40744.[2] Thanks, Georg [1] https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/core/torspec/-/blob/main/proposals/109-no… [2] https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/core/tor/-/issues/40744

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(Save the date) Tor Relay Operators Meetup - 2023-01-28 @ 19UTC
by gus 02 Feb '23

02 Feb '23

Dear relay operators, Save the date: our next Tor relay operator meetup will happen on January 28 at 19:00 UTC! We're drafting the agenda here: - pad: https://pad.riseup.net/p/tor-relay-op-meetup-j28-keep - onionsite: http://kfahv6wfkbezjyg4r6mlhpmieydbebr5vkok5r34ya464gqz6c44bnyd.onion/p/tor… Feel free to add topics and/or questions. Room Link - https://tor.meet.coop/gus-og0-x74-dzn cheers, Gus -- The Tor Project Community Team Lead

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Relays at universities campaign
by Eldalië 02 Feb '23

02 Feb '23

Hello everyone. At last Saturday's Tor Relay Operators Meetup, ongoing work on a "relays at universities" campaign was announced. I am interested in it as I may be able to help a little, so I'd like to receive any news, but I don't remember any message about it on tor-relays(a)lists.torproject.org list, and I see that tor-relays-universities(a)lists.torproject.org hasn't received any message at all since the only one from 2021. Is there a way to keep up with the campaign project already or it's being worked on by a "closed group"? Thanks, Eldalië -- Eldalië My private key is attached. Please, use it and provide me yours!

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relayor v23.0.0 is released
by nusenu 28 Jan '23

28 Jan '23

Hi, relayor v23.0.0 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 comes with some great new prometheus integration features (some labels that tor does not provide out of the box). I'll follow up with a post that gives a general introduction on how to use relayor's prometheus integration soon. Changelog: https://github.com/nusenu/ansible-relayor/releases/tag/v23.0.0 Note: If you used relayor's prometheus support in previous relayor releases, make sure to set the tor_prometheus_scrape_file variable after upgrading to v23.0.0 and before running ansible-playbook with v23.0.0 for the first time. See the README for an example value. kind regards, nusenu -- https://nusenu.github.io

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Tor Relay Operators Meetup Jan 28
by George 27 Jan '23

27 Jan '23

Tomorrow is the next Tor relay operator meetup will happen on January 28 at 19:00 UTC! We're drafting the agenda here: - pad: https://pad.riseup.net/p/tor-relay-op-meetup-j28-keep - onionsite: http://kfahv6wfkbezjyg4r6mlhpmieydbebr5vkok5r34ya464gqz6c44bnyd.onion/p/tor… Feel free to add topics and/or questions. Room Link - https://tor.meet.coop/gus-og0-x74-dzn g

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Proposal: increase max number of relays per IP
by mail＠nothingtohide.nl 23 Jan '23

23 Jan '23

Hello! Running a high bandwidth Tor server requires a lot of IPv4 addresses, while IPv4 addresses are becoming quite scarce and very expensive. For this reason we started the process to get the current limit of two relays per IPv4 address increased to reduce the cost of running high bandwidth Tor servers. You can find our proposal on Tor's Gitlab: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/core/tor/-/issues/40744. If you would like to support this proposal, let us know and we add your domain/nick to the issue :). This topic will also be on the agenda of the Tor Relay Operator Meetup on 2023-01-28 19:00 UTC: https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-relays/2023-January/020973.html. See you there! - https://applied-privacy.net/ https://artikel10.org/ https://nothingtohide.nl/

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bridge going down
by Anonforpeace 21 Jan '23

21 Jan '23

Hello: I have recently built a Tor Bridge (nickname is h4ck3rspace) and when it first went up, it was up to about two weeks and then it went down. So I brought it up again and ever since, it routinely goes down every 1 to 3 nights, between 8p and 10p EST. I've never seen this type of behavior before. Is there a way to know why it keeps going down so often, and subsequently how to prevent it? My area doesn't suffer from power outages and each time I restart Tor I wait to make sure it says that it is visible externally and that it will be published. Any help is greatly appreciated. Thank you Sent with [Proton Mail](https://proton.me/) secure email.

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