- tor-relays - lists.torproject.org

Restart relay daily
by peckman＠hushmail.com 23 Apr '13

23 Apr '13

Hi! I am running a middle-man relay on a Raspberry Pi averaging 700 kBps. The board is very limited in processing power and memory. After some days, maybe a week, the Tor daemon runs out of memory and I have to start it manually again. I have tried different Tor versions, built alphas with and without the --enable-openbsd-malloc but it's no measurable difference; eventually a bad malloc will terminate the program. To solve this I have added a cron job to restart the daemon on a daily basis. Is this an OK solution? Traffic-wise it takes around 30 minutes to get back to normal throughput but the alternative is long downtimes until I notice the crash. Will there be any problem with the directory interaction? Relay info: Fast Guard Named Running Stable V2Dir Valid Tor 0.2.4.11-alpha Kind Regards, peckman

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Re: [tor-relays] [tor-talk] NPA to urge Internet providers to block users of hijacking software [Tor]
by grarpamp 22 Apr '13

22 Apr '13

>> http://mainichi.jp/english/english/newsselect/news/20130418p2a00m0na013000c… "to voluntarily block communications if an anonymous software system ... is found abused online." The second ripline leaves some room but is without specifics. > It seems they are blurring the line between recommending that websites > refuse to answer connections from the Tor network, vs recommending that > ISPs prevent their users from reaching the Tor network. "The panel specifically recommends that communications be blocked when there is access from IP addresses publicly listed as those allocated to the third in a chain of computers that are used by Tor." This quote clears that up to be the former. However, it appears they also intend to ask network operators to block exits as well, not just websites: http://mainichi.jp/select/news/20130418k0000e040232000c.html "Based on the recommendations, the National Police Agency to encourage voluntary efforts such as the industry of Internet connection operators." They don't seem to say whether non-exits (thus the EG's among them) would remain accessible or not. "The Tor system was utilized by citizens in pro-democracy movements in the Middle East to escape government suppression, while Wikileaks also recommends Tor to information providers. The planned access restrictions are therefore expected to spark a backlash from the industry. 'Communication privacy is our lifeline. We won't be able to accept such a request,' said an industry insider. An NPA official said, 'We will make detailed explanations and seek their understanding.'" http://mainichi.jp/select/news/20130124k0000e040166000c.html "police were summarized for the strengthening of cyber crime investigation the 'emergency program' ... According to the National Police Agency, the police has been promoting public-private partnerships with such Internet-related companies so far, but pointed out that investigation and not keep up with the rapid advances in information and communication technology ... In the future, expanding the range to exchange personal level regardless of the occupation of the other party, and that improve the information collection... Emergency program, mentioned considerations and be entrusted to the private sector, the analysis of the modus operandi of education and other investigators" It's a little unclear to what degree these groups are for enforcement or education, whether they attend public conferences, etc. Likely the usual mix. There could be some good opportunities there. Cracking, corp/finance, data theft, copyright that sort of deal is one thing. But these idiots making death/bomb threats and such are really getting old not just on its face but due to their tendency to make the news and piss people off, and against Tor, in a different sort of way. I presume exit operators in Japan could ask NPA/Mainichi for the full panel doc and would be very interested in following this issue ... cc'd.

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What is "regular" traffic on an obfuscated bridge
by Torry Torah 19 Apr '13

19 Apr '13

Hi there, After seeing the call to arm [1], I decided to spin up some 2 new obfuscated bridges. I am already running 2 (non-obf) bridges, and was about to boot 3 others. I'm seeing something like 4MB/day of traffic with those obf bridges, whereas the 2 non-obf bridges show something like 10MB/sec. ( All the servers more or less have the same specs, so it's not a hardware/connectivity issue. My question is: is it a "normal" amount of traffic on an obf bridge? For what it's worth, I followed intructions here [2] on an ubuntu precise with a firewall. I allowed communications on the OR port and the 2 ports given by obf2 and obf3. I've set up the 2 obf bridges 8 hours ago, give or take, maybe is it just a matter of insufficient uptime? Cheers, [1] https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-relays/2013-April/002089.html [2] https://www.torproject.org/projects/obfsproxy-debian-instructions.html.en

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Trying to set up an obfs2/3 bridge on Windows, missing something.
by Asa Rossoff 18 Apr '13

18 Apr '13

I think I'm suppling the ServerTransport parameters incorrectly. the log seems to indicate it is listening on the wrong ports for obfs2 and obfs3. Since it was the only compiled package I saw for Windows with obfs support, I downloaded the tor-pluggable-transports-browser-2.4.11-alpha-2. I am using the following .torrc -- Address *obfuscated* AvoidDiskWrites 1 BridgeRelay 1 LearnCircuitBuildTimeout 0 CircuitBuildTimeout 60 ClientTransportPlugin websocket exec flashproxy-client --register :0 :56833 *[not useful, I realize]* ContactInfo *obfuscated* ControlPort 9051 CookieAuthentication 1 DataDirectory *obfuscated* DirPort 0 DirReqStatistics 0 ExitPolicy reject *:* GeoIPFile *obfuscated*/geoip GeoIPv6File *obfuscated*/geoip6 HardwareAccel 1 ServerTransportPlugin obfs2,obfs3 exec pyobfsproxy managed ServerTransportListenAddr obfs2,obfs3 0.0.0.0:56831 0.0.0.0:56832 Log notice stdout Nickname *obfuscated* NumCPUs 4 ORPort 56830 RelayBandwidthBurst 97280 RelayBandwidthRate 71680 SocksListenAddress 127.0.0.1 SocksPort 9050 I get the following log messages on starting Tor: [Notice] Tor v0.2.4.11-alpha (git-fcd9248387249d68) running on Windows 7 with Libevent 2.0.21-stable and OpenSSL 1.0.0k. [Notice] Tor can't help you if you use it wrong! Learn how to be safe at https://www.torproject.org/download/download#warning [Notice] This version is not a stable Tor release. Expect more bugs than usual. [Notice] Read configuration file "*obfuscated*\torrc". [Notice] Opening Socks listener on 127.0.0.1:9050 [Notice] Opening Control listener on 127.0.0.1:9051 [Notice] Opening OR listener on 0.0.0.0:56830 [Notice] Parsing GEOIP IPv4 file *obfuscated*/geoip. [Notice] Parsing GEOIP IPv6 file *obfuscated*/geoip6. [Notice] Your Tor server's identity key fingerprint is '*obfuscated* *obfuscated*' [Notice] We now have enough directory information to build circuits. [Notice] Bootstrapped 80%: Connecting to the Tor network. [Notice] New control connection opened. [Notice] Bootstrapped 85%: Finishing handshake with first hop. [Notice] Registered server transport 'obfs3' at '0.0.0.0:60093' [Notice] Registered server transport 'obfs2' at '0.0.0.0:60094' [Notice] Bootstrapped 90%: Establishing a Tor circuit. [Notice] Tor has successfully opened a circuit. Looks like client functionality is working. [Notice] Bootstrapped 100%: Done. I have ports 56830, 56831, 56832, and 56833 forwarded to this machine from my router/nat. I get connections on my ORPort 56830 -- though in 2-3 days, not a single client. Seems to be directory exchanges (?) or my own Tor Browser use. Isn't 2-3 days long enough to be discovered? Looks like it is listening on 60093 and 60094 for obfs3 and obfs2 instead of the intended 56832 and 56831 (the ports I have forwarded) for the purpose. Any help? Is it just a syntax error on my part (I tried using two lines for the ServerTransportListenAddr but one was automatically deleted after editing in Vidalia), or am I further off-track? Thanks a bundle :) Asa

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Tor node monitoring
by Alex Beal 17 Apr '13

17 Apr '13

Hello All, I was wondering what, if any, software you use for monitoring your relays. It would be nice if I could get an email when the Tor daemon crashes, and maybe another every night telling me about bandwidth used, average speed, etc. Thanks, Alex -- For sensitive information, use my public key: http://media.usrsb.in/files/pub.asc Fingerprint: 0BCE 27F8 FBED 34C0 B936 7625 1D7D CA76 C811 1C0C

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Tor Relay on DSL connection
by Jochen 16 Apr '13

16 Apr '13

Hello, I'm running a tor relay (non-exit) on DSL connection. My ISP reconnects me every 24 hours and gives me a new ip. How must tor be configured to publish it's new ip address after reconnect? Can tor daemon (linux) do this automatically or do I have to run a cron job and restart service cron at specific times?

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I need to shut down my relay for a month possibly, what should I do
by Nate Homier 15 Apr '13

15 Apr '13

I'm upgrading my internet to a static IP setup with custom reverse DNS, which is perfect for my relay as then all complaints go to the contact info in the reverse DNS, which would be me. However I'm leaving on a month long trip and if the upgrade won't happen before April 17th 9 AM, I probably will half to shut down the server for a month. The server would be turned back on about May 25th or 30th. If I shut down for a month what will happen to my relay. What if someone chooses the same nick for their relay and so on. Nate

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BitTorrent complaint
by bartels 13 Apr '13

13 Apr '13

Hi People, Two days ago I opened two fast tor exit relays v2.3 on debian wheezy. Now I get complaints from paramount that I have unwittingly distributed Hansel and Gretel via BitTorrent <Port>39585</Port> <Type>BitTorrent</Type> Can this be linked to tor, or is that impossible? I don't want to shut down tor for no reason. - Bartels.

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On the way to more diversity
by Moritz Bartl 12 Apr '13

12 Apr '13

Hi, I have started to make changes to the Torservers.net website to reflect that we have grown from "professional Tor Exit hosting" to a state where growth of a single organization is not useful any more. We have refrained from ramping up more exit capacity for quite some time because of that. With the help of TorProject Inc., and by being an example for others to follow, we can now refer to multiple organizations, and become an "umbrella organization" that distributes funds across these organizations. Legally, we might be able to offer "abuse handling services" for exit operators. I will discuss this with our lawyer, and keep you updated. With the German charitable Wau Holland Foundation, we have found a first great partner for the "new" Torservers.net. Instead of donating directly to us, you can now donate to the project account at Wau Holland Foundation. Hopefully, we can find even more partners in the future. All partner organizations have been chosen carefully. We will iron out details on how we distribute funds so we get a more diverse Tor network. Please, talk to us if you want to set up a similar organization. https://www.torservers.net/partners.html https://www.torservers.net/donate.html The next step is to also professionalize bridges hosting. It is quite a shame that we only have a few hundred bridges in total. The situation got worse now that regular bridges are blocked in several countries, and in China only obfs3 bridges work -- of which we only have a few. We are actively on the lookout for sponsors interested in funding bridges. -- Moritz Bartl https://www.torservers.net/

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big spike in cpu usage
by Owen Gunden 12 Apr '13

12 Apr '13

I have been running a non-exit tor relay for a few months now. It's on a metered VPS, so after some experimenting I found that I can afford about this much bandwidth: RelayBandwidthRate 250 KB RelayBandwidthBurst 500 KB This worked fine until recently. However, just today I noticed the machine was sluggish, and sure enough tor was using 99% cpu and dumping these messages to syslog: Your computer is too slow to handle this many circuit creation requests! Please consider using the MaxAdvertisedBandwidth config option or choosing a more restricted exit policy. [2022 similar message(s) suppressed in last 60 seconds] Digging deeper, I've seen these messages pop up from time to time over the last 30 days or so, but not consistently, and I've never noticed the cpu pegged (but it could have happened, I don't use the machine that often). I tried including: MaxAdvertisedBandwidth 50 KB and # https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-relays/2012-May/001352.html MaxOnionsPending 250 to no avail. I have had to dial all the way down to: RelayBandwidthRate 40 KB RelayBandwidthBurst 80 KB and that seems to make the messages go away, but the cpu is still pegged and the machine is sluggish. It's running on an up-to-date debian squeeze (6.0.7), with tor 0.2.3.25-1~~squeeze+1 and openssl 0.9.8o-4squeeze14. I run updates fairly often. I upgraded to this version of tor a couple of weeks ago, which could be related, but doesn't correlate perfectly to when I first find the "too slow" messages in my logs. The only other recent updates that seem plausibly related are libbind/libisc/libisccc/etc.

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