- tor-relays - lists.torproject.org

Experiences running a Tor exit relay in Serbia (or with MAXKO)?
by Beacon Tor Node 17 Jul '26

17 Jul '26

Hello everyone, I'm planning to run my first Tor exit relay and I'm looking at hosting it in an underrepresented location. According to Tor Metrics there are currently no exit relays in Serbia at all, so I'm considering a Serbian location with the provider MAXKO (a Croatia-based company, AS211619). Before I commit, I'd be grateful for any experience or advice on two points: - Has anyone run a Tor exit relay hosted in Serbia? Any legal or practical issues to be aware of, given Serbia is outside the EU (no "mere conduit" protection)? - Does anyone have experience with MAXKO as an exit-friendly host, in particular how they handle abuse complaints and whether their Serbian location runs under a separate AS? I plan to run a reduced exit policy, a proper abuse contact and a notice page on port 80. Thanks a lot for any input! Best regards

2 1

Tor Metrics
by wxw＠safe-mail.net 13 Jul '26

13 Jul '26

Hi I have operated many relays over the years. I only started using tor metrics to check up on my relays for maybe 3-5 years. Over the last year I have noticed that my uptime has reset randomly sometimes every couple of days sometimes every couple of weeks. When I first started they were up for months at a time. Now I know what you may be thinking that my relays are just going down for whatever reason. Well that's not the case as I do monitor them independently also. The thing is they all go out and reset the uptime at exactly the same time. Now I use 3 separate vps providers for 17 middle relays. When I go to check them they all are showing the exact same new uptime. Can you help me to understand this. Thanks a lot for all that you do. Regards Phil (search masstor relays)

3 2

Spam to relay address after three months
by Andrew J. Caines 13 Jul '26

13 Jul '26

The email address used for the HALTor relay was first published in the configuration on 3 Apr 2026. The first spam received at this address arrived 1 Jul 2026, ninety days later. This isn't a complaint or request for support or advice, just sharing the observation that even in the middle of this year of our Lord two thousands and twenty-six, scraping is still practiced... that is, unless there is some record of relays containing these addresses which has been published - intentionally or not. -- -Andrew J. Caines- Unix Systems Architect A.J.Caines(a)halplant.com "Machines take me by surprise with great frequency" - Alan Turing

2 1

Tor relay doing 400 Mbps up, 50 Mbps down until reboot
by forest-relay-contact＠cryptolab.net 11 Jul '26

11 Jul '26

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA512 Hello. One of my relays, 54C85B97B4A5253483AA269B341C4CCF9328C443, had 400 Mbps up and only 50 Mbps down for several hours. Performance got so bad that could barely SSH in. Unfortunately, I rebooted before doing diagnostics and the problem has not happened since, so I couldn't see if Tor logged asymmetric bandwidth use in its heartbeat. Nothing in the logs indicate anything abnormal. This started on Jun 25th, 12:30 AM UTC and continued until I rebooted at around 4:00 AM UTC. Tor's CPU use was 100% for the duration of this event and the uplink was not saturated. Is this something that has happened before? Could it be some DoS attack? As far as I know, the only way to get Tor to use asymmetric bandwidth is to use it as a directory mirror. Regards, forest -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- iHUEARYKAB0WIQQtr8ZXhq/o01Qf/pow+TRLM+X4xgUCaj2vuwAKCRAw+TRLM+X4 xhhPAQDqw7+xxZWmOUP00rTmyT1brTFdkTRwEUWWmSdx1njWLAEA8lttz57jLKO7 zZSJyBW02z8rMKds0SpRiP2heVBfFwQ= =ecuY -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

2 1

GeoIPFile option warning
by krishna e bera 27 Jun '26

27 Jun '26

I am seeing these warnings in Tor's notices.log: Mar 24 09:42:21.000 [notice] Configured to measure directory request statistics, but no GeoIP database found. Please specify a GeoIP database using the GeoIPFile option. Mar 24 09:42:21.000 [notice] Configured to measure entry node statistics, but no GeoIP database found. Please specify a GeoIP database using the GeoIPFile option. However the option is set in torrc and i verified the files are at those locations and readable by all: GeoIPFile /usr/local/share/tor/geoip GeoIPv6File /usr/local/share/tor/geoip6 Any hints how i could check whether the warnings are spurious or dump what the running config actually is? I know it is reading the torrc because introducing an error in the file stops it from loading.

2 3

Maximizing contribution with own ASN + IPv6 — exit vs guard, IPv6 exit, AS diversity
by lists.torproject.org.broker091＠passmail.net 25 Jun '26

25 Jun '26

Hi all, I run my own ASN and announce my own IPv6 prefix via BGP (with valid RPKI ROAs), plus IPv4. I’d like to contribute to the network in the way that adds the most value, and I’d appreciate guidance from experienced operators. My situation: - ASN: own, prefix announced via BGP (IPv6 /48, IPv4 /28) - Bandwidth available: ~100 Mbit/s, monthly traffic budget: unmetered - Willing to handle abuse complaints: yes - rDNS and abuse contact fully under my control My questions: - Given that AS diversity is scarce, is an exit relay the highest-value use here, or does a high-bandwidth guard already help significantly from an underrepresented AS? - IPv6 exit support seems uncommon — is enabling IPv6Exit on my exit a meaningful gap to fill, and any caveats? - Any recommendations on exit policy and per-IP layout within my prefix to balance reachability and abuse handling? - If I run multiple relays, is the new cryptographic family scheme (FamilyId / tor --keygen-family) the right approach over legacy MyFamily? Happy to share more details. Thanks for any pointers.

3 2

deb.torproject.org-keyring package missing in Ubuntu 26.04 (resolute) repo
by nusenu 22 Jun '26

22 Jun '26

Hi, according to https://support.torproject.org/little-t-tor/getting-started/installing/ users should perform: apt install tor deb.torproject.org-keyring but https://deb.torproject.org/torproject.org/dists/resolute/main/binary-amd64/… unlike https://deb.torproject.org/torproject.org/dists/noble/main/binary-amd64/Pac… the resolute repo does not contain the deb.torproject.org-keyring package. kind regards, nusenu -- https://nusenu.github.io

4 4

Re: relay not working 100%
by C. Pe. 16 Jun '26

16 Jun '26

Hi, a very generic advice would be to rather not to throttle the bandwidth to such a low value, but to set a daily(!) quota. A relay running fast, but only a few hours a day is better than a slow relay running all the time. Regards, C Am 2. Juni 2026 um 11:34 schrieb torgnole-relayed via tor-relays <tor-relays(a)lists.torproject.org>: Hi, I'm convinced that tor allows the needed strong anonymity on internet, and I want to contribute. I set up, as a newbie, a middle relay, in february 2026. I rode that a new relay needs to wait something like 80 days before running 100%, the time for the network to check it's liable. It is now running for months, and it is still not running 100%. I have rate-limited the traffic to 500KB/s as for the moment I'm using a low cost VPS. But it appears that it doesn't even reach 70KB/s (it is the best pike in the last days), and even more regrettable, it fell down to 10KB/s or worse since 2-3 days. It used to have 4 flags (Running, Stable, Valid, Fast) but I'm afraid it lose the Rapid flag in the last days. I really don't understand what's going on. Tor logs seem not to show anything helping. Nyx used to show thousand of "inbound" and thousands of "outbound", but rarely "circuits" or anything else (I have to say I understand nearly nothing in Nyx, as I can't find any tutorial explaining it deeply). Nowadays, Nyx shows thousands of inbound, but only a very few outbound, something like 20-30. Server dosen't seem to have failings. Tor version is 0.4.9.8. on linux relay is minotor (B438F0D3E2281C307B459DB2ABDDB48871D06C18) at https://metrics.torproject.org/rs.html#details/B438F0D3E2281C307B459DB2ABDD… VPS is on interserver.net (2TB/month). I can send logs or torrc if needed. So my questions are : what's going on with my relay ? How is it possible it is still not running 100% ? is the bandwidth enough for a middle relay, or should I opt for a bridge ? All the best, _______________________________________________ tor-relays mailing list -- tor-relays(a)lists.torproject.org To unsubscribe send an email to tor-relays-leave(a)lists.torproject.org -- Sent with https://mailfence.com Secure and private email

2 1

Banned by Spamhaus and AWS
by Ole Rydahl 16 Jun '26

16 Jun '26

I have been running a non-exit Tor relay since Snowdon and a The Guardian journalist used Tor. I am doing it using my public ip on my home network. 1Tbyte/day roughly. Starting a year ago I was excluded from the Danish "internal revenue services" - skat.dk. However, using the Tor-browser I could still perform my duties there... Now! From May this year, my ip over and over again got listed at Spamhaus. My gateway only allows my MTA to use the ports 25, 465 and 587. Mysterious! Spamhaus' services are used a lot, so it seriously limits who we can send mails to! Spamhaus claims the following: Why was this IP listed? a.b.c.d has been classified as part of a proxy network. There is a type of malware using this IP that installs a proxy that can be used for nearly anything, including sending spam or stealing customer data. This should be of more concern than a Spamhaus listing, which is a symptom and not the problem. The proxy is installed on a device - usually an Android mobile, firestick, smart doorbell, etc, but also iPads, and Windows computers - that is using your IP to send spam DIRECTLY to the internet via port 25: This is very often the result of third party "free" apps like VPNs, channel unlockers, streaming, etc being installed on someone's personal device, usually a phone. After a throughout search for "infections" - including finding out that some Tor-relays are using port 465 and 587 as or-port - I caved in and stopped my tor-relay. After a few days the miracle happened my ban at Spamhaus was lifted _and_ I was allowed access to skat.dk directly. My conclusions based on my experiments so far are: Spamhaus falsely considers my Tor relay as malware and so does AWS. (Skat.dk are performing their services at AWS - judging from the ip's used.) Hilfe!!! /Ole PS: no PTR-record relates my domain and ip and Google's DNS-services are used. PPS: I have opened a number of tickets at Spamhaus. However, I have not been successful in having a meaningful conversation with them - so far.

6 7

Strange SMTP attempts from my tor relay
by Ole Rydahl 12 Jun '26

12 Jun '26

Hi, I have noticed that my firewall registers connection attempts from my tor-server on port 465 and 587. My relay performs normally, so it appears that they have no significance for the operation. Could somebody please explain the logic behind those SMTP connections? I am a bit puzzled! /Ole Rydahl OS: Fedora Linux 43 (Server Edition), Platform: Tor 0.4.9.8 on Linux

5 6