- tor-relays - lists.torproject.org

Bridge Distribution Mechanism none
by Ross Camm 19 Apr '22

19 Apr '22

I have been up and running with my Tor Bridge for a number of months now, yet Tor Metrics reports that the Bridge Distribution Mechanism for my server is stuck on 'none'. Consequently I see no incoming connections to my Bridge. I have tried altering the following BridgeRelay 1 PublishServerDescriptor bridge BridgeDistribution moat with no success. The mechanism is always none....and I have left the changes for a week to see if Metrics updates to no avail. I have a static IPv4 address and functional IPv6 and have confirmed my ports are publicly accessible for both protocols Self-testing indicates your ORPort [XXXX:XXXX:XXXX::XXX]:993 is reachable from the outside. Excellent. Self-testing indicates your ORPort XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX:993 is reachable from the outside. Excellent. Publishing server descriptor. I am running raspberry pi os buster which had an obsolete Tor version. I subsequently upgraded and stay up to date with the latest bullseye version via bullseye backports, Currently Tor 0.4.6.10-1~bpo10+1 Any ideas of why my servers Bridge Distribution Mechanism is always reported and behaving as none ? Thanks in advance ;) Ross

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Instabilities in Hydra family expected
by abuse-node49＠posteo.de 19 Apr '22

19 Apr '22

Hello network! I would like to briefly inform that I have repeated problems with the hoster Yourserver.se, where I run some exit relays. Again a relay was deactivated with the message "Botnet". At that time I wrote a detailed explanation about the issue. I agreed to a temporary switch to a harmless relay, but as an exit operator I did not want to keep this state. So starting today the "Hydra family" will get some gaps which will take some time to replace. I know that there is an attempt to write a list of recommended providers somewhere. However, I have found that some of the information is not up to date. It is better to look into the Tor Metrics and find out the hoster for current exit relays that is mentioned there. Sometimes you are lucky. From my point of view, it should be possible to find out the age of exit relays from the Tor network database in relation to the hosters (ASxxxx) and thus find a ranking for reliability and suitability. Automatically, this would be a ranking for "privacy support". However, it would then be problematic that all newcomers would rely on these few hosters. Perhaps we will have to live with these problematic hosters and endure the dynamics. Here is a note about startup problems of the Tor service after a reboot: In my observation, this only happens with slow hardware and may also depend on the hypervisor. I use the same systems and configurations everywhere and see dead Tor services after startup only with the hoster Trabia.com and UDN (Ukrainian Data Network), with UDN working better now than a few years ago. It seems to be a timeout during start-up of the OS. With Debian "systemctl restart tor.service" solved the problem until the next reboot. With delayed start or a cron job this could be avoided, I assume. The fast hosters like * OVH.com, * Frantech.ca, * Flokinet.is, * Bahnhof.net * and Terrahost.com do not have the problem after reboot. First I will try to replace the failing VPS at Yourserver.se with reliable providers from my list, but I am checking other offers. I would also like to ask other participants in the network to name smaller, still unknown hosters. Kind regards Olaf

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Tor Relay showing as down
by Alexandre Corradi Guerreiro 18 Apr '22

18 Apr '22

I have been running a ToR Relay for almost a year. https://metrics.torproject.org/rs.html#details/6C6C87A774A211F53DE5116A7A8A… and suddenly it stopped working. I don't see any errors on the logs but the relay is always showing in the relay search page as down. I even tried to upgrade the Tor client to a new version 0.4.6.10 to see if something changes, but no success. The process is running all the time, I see some circuit connections forming and after a while no more traffic going. Based on the syslog I see that everything looks fine, see next example. Apr 18 20:32:17 ubu01 Tor[1093]: Bootstrapped 10% (conn_done): Connected to a relay Apr 18 20:32:17 ubu01 Tor[1093]: Bootstrapped 14% (handshake): Handshaking with a relay Apr 18 20:32:18 ubu01 Tor[1093]: Bootstrapped 15% (handshake_done): Handshake with a relay done Apr 18 20:32:18 ubu01 Tor[1093]: Bootstrapped 75% (enough_dirinfo): Loaded enough directory info to build circuits Apr 18 20:32:18 ubu01 Tor[1093]: Bootstrapped 90% (ap_handshake_done): Handshake finished with a relay to build circuits Apr 18 20:32:18 ubu01 Tor[1093]: Bootstrapped 95% (circuit_create): Establishing a Tor circuit Apr 18 20:32:19 ubu01 Tor[1093]: Bootstrapped 100% (done): Done Apr 18 20:32:54 ubu01 Tor[1093]: New control connection opened. Apr 18 20:37:51 ubu01 Tor[1093]: External address seen and suggested by a directory authority: 187.74.71.95 Apr 18 20:38:17 ubu01 Tor[1093]: Now checking whether IPv4 ORPort 187.74.71.95:9001 is reachable... (this may take up to 20 minutes -- look for log messages indicating success) Apr 18 20:39:20 ubu01 Tor[1093]: Self-testing indicates your ORPort 187.74.71.95:9001 is reachable from the outside. Excellent. Publishing server descriptor. Apr 18 20:40:27 ubu01 Tor[1093]: New control connection opened. Apr 18 20:42:20 ubu01 Tor[1093]: Performing bandwidth self-test...done. I tried to test my income connection from another computer to validate that there was no block on the ISP side, I could connect successfully to port 9001 as indicated on the logs. How can I troubleshoot this problem? -- Alexandre C Guerreiro

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How can I tell if standalone Snowflake is running?
by tor＠Bevitt.ws 18 Apr '22

18 Apr '22

I installed standalone Snowflake on Ubuntu per these instructions: https://community.torproject.org/relay/setup/snowflake/standalone/. Now how can I tell if it's running? Can I see the number of connections it's serviced? Will it continue after a reboot? Thanks, Chuck Bevitt Tor Project | Standalone Snowflake proxy<https://community.torproject.org/relay/setup/snowflake/standalone/> Our mission: To advance human rights and freedoms by creating and deploying free and open source anonymity and privacy technologies, supporting their unrestricted availability and use, and furthering their scientific and popular understanding. community.torproject.org

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tor/munin/stem
by potlatch 15 Apr '22

15 Apr '22

Hello Tor braintrust, Is there some authoritative documentation for setting up VPS monitoring via stem and munin other than product websites? I hate to re-invent installations if I can gain knowledge elsewhere. I'm very slow working with python3. The TMS combo seems to work fine but the first error I found claims all of my relays and bridges have similar user count (as 1.67k US). They also don't self-upgrade when I modify the .conf files followed by restart. Thanks in advance for any user help, stay safe and sane, potlatch Sent with [ProtonMail](https://protonmail.com/) secure email.

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Relay question
by onionize＠riseup.net 13 Apr '22

13 Apr '22

Hello, I have a question for other operators of the Tor. I started the nodes recently. On yui.cat status is displayed as offline (https://yui.cat/family/F81C34435CA08B81105B3C77CF29EE7824652BFB/, https://metrics.torproject.org/rs.html#search/family:8CD3507662A9946899CFE3… I did everything according to the instructions, the server work, the Tor process is running. Yesterday everything was displayed normally on yui.cat. I'm new relay operator, I do not know why it happens. Is this normal? Has anyone had the same situation?

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Re: [tor-relays] Does Tor work with Intel QAT acceleration
by Andreas Bollhalder 12 Apr '22

12 Apr '22

Hello Alex Thank you for your nice hint ot QAT_Engine. Yes, in theory it really seems to be possible. Looking at the Github repo of the QAT_Engine, it looks like there are still some issues with OpenSSL 3.0: Support for QAT HW ECX, QAT SW ECX, QAT HW PRF and QAT HW HKDF is disabled when built against OpenSSL 3.0 due to known issues instead it uses non-accelerated implementation from OpenSSL.I'm on Ubuntu 20.04, so I should be still using OpenSSL 1.x. There are plans for switching to OpenSSL 3.0 in Ubuntu 22.04. We'll see... So, one really has to test and I need to think about it. Wouldn't be a cheep test, but if this platform can give me a medium power system (~50W) and great speed, then it's definitively what I'm looking for. Otherwise I would prefer a Ryzen like the 5750GE. Andreas On Tuesday, April 12, 2022 03:42 CEST, Alex Xu <alex(a)alxu.ca> wrote: Excerpts from Andreas Bollhalder's message of April 10, 2022 3:32 pm: > > Hi all > > I have my first Tor relay up und running. It's currently installed on a little desktop computer with an Intel i5 9500T CPU. My Internet connection is 10Gb/s symetric. From this bandwidth, I would be able to spend a good part for supporting the Tor network. > > With that little machine, it seems that it would max out at somewhere at ~30 MBytes/s. For my definitive Tor relay hardware, I'm currently researching some options, which would be capable of handling Tor traffic at the rate of 200 to 300MBytes. Even it would be used nowadays, but who knows whats coming in the future and I hope this relay would last 5 years ore so. > > It looks to me, that with a normal CPU, it's impossible to reach my goal. But then I encountered, that Intel has the Quick Assist Technoloy (QAT) integrated in some of their products (ie. Atom C3xx8). This QAT can be used with OpenSSL as a hardware accelerator for encryption. There also exist dedicated PCIe cards with QAT (ie. Netgate CPIC-8955). > > Searching the Internet, I couldn't find any information if QAT would be helpful with Tor. But Tor uses the OpenSSL library and this can use the QAT acceleration. Is there anyone who has tried this und can share his expirience? > > Thanks in advance > Andreas > _______________________________________________ > tor-relays mailing list > tor-relays(a)lists.torproject.org > https://lists.torproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tor-relays > In theory, you should be able to enable QAT with "HardwareAccel 1" on OpenSSL 1.x after installing https://github.com/intel/QAT_Engine. I'm not sure about the process for OpenSSL 3.0; I believe it involves editing OPENSSLDIR/openssl.cnf.

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DNS server
by onionize＠riseup.net 10 Apr '22

10 Apr '22

I was setting up exit nodes and I had a question. Why is it recommended to use DNS caching software Unbound? What benefits does it provide compared to using hoster's DNS resolver?

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Next Tor Relay Operator Meetup - April 2 @ 1900 UTC
by gus 08 Apr '22

08 Apr '22

Hello relay operators and Tor friends, The next Tor Relay Operator meetup will happen this Saturday, April 2 @ 1900 UTC / 1500 EDT / 2100 CET. Where: BigBlueButton - https://tor.meet.coop/gus-og0-x74-dzn No need for a registration or anything else, just use the room-link above. The agenda is available here: https://pad.riseup.net/p/tor-relay-meetup-april-2022-keep Everyone is free to bring up additional questions or topics at the meeting itself. Please share with your friends, social media and other mailing lists! cheers, Gus -- The Tor Project Community Team Lead

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Tor Relay Operator Meetup (Saturday, March 5th @ 2000 UTC)
by gus 02 Apr '22

02 Apr '22

Hello everyone, This Saturday, March 5th @ 2000 UTC, we have a Tor Relay Operator Meetup! We'll share some updates about Tor Network Health, Tor Bridges and the ongoing situation in Russia/Ukraine (Snowflake surge, bridges blocked, BBC and DW onionsites). Everyone is free to bring up additional questions or topics at the meeting itself. Date & Time: March 5, 2022 - 2000 UTC Where: BigBlueButton room - https://tor.meet.coop/gus-og0-x74-dzn No need for a registration or anything else, just use the room-link above. Please share with your friends, social media and other mailing lists! cheers, Gus -- The Tor Project Community Team Lead

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