- tor-relays - lists.torproject.org

Debian relay Puppet module
by Alexander Fortin 19 Jun '14

19 Jun '14

Hi folks, I’ve recently joined the Tor Project and I have been running a non exit relay for a few days. I’m also a Puppet user and, more in general, I try to make deploying applications on the servers I administer as easy as possibile, Tor included. I think Tor documentation to install on a Debian server is quite good, but I still prefer to have Puppet doing that for me, and I’m quite sure every Puppet user out there would think the same. This is the work-in-progress version of the module I’m currently using to manage my relay: https://github.com/shaftoe/puppet-tor/tree/fixes I’m open to any feedback on how to improve it and eventually publish it to the Puppet forge (make it easier for other Puppet users to use it); maybe adding some decent disclaimer on top of the README? I can also drop the whole idea if someone convince me is a bad one... -- Alexander Fortin http://about.me/alexanderfortin

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Tor-relay - IP
by Rui Branco 18 Jun '14

18 Jun '14

hello, I'm a new user of the Tor-relay and I have many doubts. Sorry about that. In the atlas project why the tor-relays ip are discovered? isn't it dangerous? -- Best Regards, Rui Branco

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normal for a new relay node to be under-utilized?
by Kali Tor 18 Jun '14

18 Jun '14

Is it normal for a new relay node to carry almost no traffic even after 24 hrs? From Atlast Uptime: 1 day 8 hours 30 minutes and 28 seconds Advertised Bandwidth: 59.71 KB/s From arm Bandwidth (limit: 16 Mb/s, burst: 32 Mb/s, measured: 160.0 b/s) Upload (0.0 b/sec - avg: 738.8 b/sec, total: 10.8 MB) Download (0.0 b/sec - avg: 3.6 Kb/sec, total: 52.2 MB) torrcRelayBandwidthRate 2048 KB RelayBandwidthBurst 4096 KB AccountingMax 100 GB AccountingStart month 1 03:00 DirPort 9030

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Advertised Bandwidth increasing
by kingqueen 18 Jun '14

18 Jun '14

Hi I'm running the new, imaginatively-nicknamed kingqueenbtnftw relay. I have read around a lot but something I don't get. I thought advertised bandwidth was what I'd put in torrc whereas consensus weight was what some uber-machines tested my relay at, with the idea that this can foil disruption attacks by false relays pretending to give high bandwidth. SO I expected consensus weight to gradually increase. What I didn't expect was for the advertised bandwidth to increase by step changes (as shown on atlas and globe). Evidently I've got something wrong. Could somebody please enlighten this poor nub? By the way, I appreciate that consensus weight is a dimensions number but I understand that it originated as being based on kibibytes per second? If this is still the case, it's currently significantly more than my advertised bandwidth (which is less than that set in TORRC) but appears below it in the graphs? Thanks to anyone who educates me. I have full intent on both the T-shirts on offer - the standard Tor one for uptime and bandwidth, and the EFF one for still being online in a year with over 1MBps transfer :-) Hi to all who know me Kingqueen

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Operating system diversity?
by Jonathan D. Proulx 18 Jun '14

18 Jun '14

Hi All, In the recent thread relating to Debian relay Puppet modules it was suggested that a greater diversity of operating systems in tor nodes wooudl be preferable. I'm not sure if this was meant as a technical or aesthetic preference, but I am curious. Is there any technical benefit to rounning a more diverse set of opensource oprating systems for tor nodes? I discount closed source as we don't know what's going on in there. Would that present significantly different attack surfaces? I can imagine a vulnerability in the TCP stack or other kernel functionality in Linux would not be the saem in FreeBSD or vice versa... My nodes are currently Ubuntu but if there's a reason to do so I coould possibly switch OS to FreeBSD (or hurd does tor run on hurd :)) -Jon

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Advertised Bandwidth increasing
by kingqueen 17 Jun '14

17 Jun '14

Hi I'm running the new, imaginatively-nicknamed kingqueenbtnftw relay. I have read around a lot but something I don't get. I thought advertised bandwidth was what I'd put in torrc whereas consensus weight was what some uber-machines tested my relay at, with the idea that this can foil disruption attacks by false relays pretending to give high bandwidth. SO I expected consensus weight to gradually increase. What I didn't expect was for the advertised bandwidth to increase by step changes (as shown on atlas and globe). Evidently I've got something wrong. Could somebody please enlighten this poor nub? By the way, I appreciate that consensus weight is a dimensions number but I understand that it originated as being based on kibibytes per second? If this is still the case, it's currently significantly more than my advertised bandwidth (which is less than that set in TORRC) but appears below it in the graphs? Thanks to anyone who educates me. I have full intent on both the T-shirts on offer - the standard Tor one for uptime and bandwidth, and the EFF one for still being online in a year with over 1MBps transfer :-) Hi to all who know me Kingqueen -- Sent from my Android device with K-9 Mail. Please excuse my brevity.

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Ops request: Deploy OpenVPN terminators
by grarpamp 17 Jun '14

17 Jun '14

Ops request: Deploy OpenVPN terminators We are ops because we want to allow people to avoid censorship and speak freely. But are we doing all we can? It is well known that all relays, exit or non-exit are added to a variety of blocklists. Primarily through scraping the consensus. And those blocklists are then used to indiscriminately deny legitimate users/people access to sites, regardless of their 'behaviour', which more often than not has simply not been determined yet. So we need to augment what we're doing in order to be effective in our mission. Here's how... We already run Tor on an IP, that IP is blackballed as noted above, so using another port on it as a vpn terminator is pointless. Yet our hosting packages often offer other IP's in the same range, or we already have them to use as part of the deal (or, failing that, we can forward the openvpn TCP port on our bad relay IP to another clean non-bulk-blocked IP we control). We obviously cannot publish this new openvpn 'exit/termination' IP anywhere, such as in the comment field of the consensus as it will be banned. *But we can bind to it and let users find it with their own openvpn scans close to (one up or down from) our OR IP.* Just use the standard openvpn TCP port on it. There is no bandwidth cost to us to do this because all the traffic is moved between the exit IP and the openvpn termination IP over localhost. (Well, unless you are forwarding openvpn port on OR IP to another termination real IP off your box.) At minimum we should allow TCP transport out from the vpn to the world, aka the usual nat, so as to make websurfing work for our users. Bonus for allowing nattable outbound UDP, ICMP, etc. Further bonus for allowing inbound binds on whatever port on the IP that is available to be bound to. Obviously sine the IP is scarce to us, we can't allow full unnatted use of the IP. The point is, we already own these extra IP's, and legitimate people are being blocked from services for no reason other than kneejerk or blind reactions to Tor via blocking services. Ahem, cloudflare, et al and other blocking 'services' well known to us. So to the extent we have other IP's available to us, we should set them up to be unpublished openvpn nodes and let users find us by trying to terminate their vpn connections on us at that IP and openvpn port. Yes, blocklists could try the 'one IP up/down' scan method and list this project of ours too, but it's more work for them and they're unlikely to do it in any sort of global fashion. Especially since they can't prove it's part of Tor (because we don't publish the IP's as such). If we wish to make an announcement that we are running such terminators, obviously it should not be made from addresses related to our OR IP's. [FWIW, there is another openvpn terminator project out there. Unlike ours would be, its nodes are public, and even with that detriment (though possibly only because it is lesser known) it obtains more freedom from blocklisting than Tor. However its termination points perform poorly/unreliably whereas ours would be both nonpublished and better managed.]

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New SSL keys for new OpenSSL version?
by no.thing_to-hide＠cryptopathie.eu 16 Jun '14

16 Jun '14

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Hello Tor! I run an internal Tor relay on Debian Wheezy. Today the OpenSSL version was updated to 1.0.1e-2+deb7u11 . Do I need to delete the old SSL keys like after the Heartbleed bug? Thanks and best regards Anton - -- no.thing_to-hide at cryptopathie dot eu 0x30C3CDF0, RSA 2048, 24 Mar 2014 0FF8 A811 8857 1B7E 195B 649E CC26 E1A5 30C3 CDF0 Bitmessage (no metadata): BM-2cXixKZaqzJmTfz6ojiyLzmKg2JbzDnApC -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.12 (GNU/Linux) iQEcBAEBAgAGBQJTn1hxAAoJEMwm4aUww83weJAH/jYHtjrhrFrGnVdjrKPlN/TR w9NZcvRd0GrNDbZGGwemVam+OmFdHTDEeWZ73fgb/DvrGT8Iej8hD09/vD37xn9p GYhLabsKW06j8oRz7fiVDlWVOWND8QHW+UImnwKcIlvgp9a2EaSyBGVshIGppqMW wGgc8ZhoXvo5fAe/M630PHi6e/oGDJZIilSTIDmttV8M9cTEmsxah64oHZiJqVqc ierCAlAlsbkYH7fs7/QgJw0QolnhtcIZ5ALgijT+Z4EGH5oJBFnA20lvni1qLp1T O/RUTuF8qLAUWFBLgrF1Ng5zDlyPEaVUK5SO1pM6dzvDwvSWOlrapmfCd3b07DI= =OslV -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Ansible repo for setting up relays
by Sam Kottler 15 Jun '14

15 Jun '14

Alexander's email about the Puppet module he's putting together has reminded me to send a mail about an ansible repository I use to manage my relays. https://github.com/skottler/tor-ansible is where it lives. Unlike the puppet module, I'm working on getting a whole environment deployment put together. Ultimately (when I get some time) I'll have it stand up all the necessary pieces to securely run (i.e. ssh configuration, user setup, etc) a relay. For now it just installs Tor. Let me know if you've got any questions. Pull requests are all welcome, of course! -s

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Hash of session info was not as expected
by Logforme 14 Jun '14

14 Jun '14

My tor log file is usually quite boring but today it looks like this: Jun 14 13:42:46.000 [warn] Hash of session info was not as expected. Jun 14 13:57:56.000 [warn] Hash of session info was not as expected. Jun 14 14:11:58.000 [warn] Hash of session info was not as expected. A new line about every 10 minutes since 04:14:53 (CET) Is it a user with problems, an attack on my relay or a sign that my relay have some kind of hardware/software issues?

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