Hi,
Keifer Bly:
So recently I had an uptime of about 3-4 days but then I had to restart my computer to install an operating system update (the OS in question being Mac OS X High Sierra). I know I am not to worry about what flags I have as long as I am not a bad relay, but am curious, what is the allowed downtime the network allows to do things like install operating system updates, etc, without significantly impacting time between failures?
In general it's much better to run an updated relay and take as much time is needed for operating system updates. You can read Tor's protocol specification section that describe how directory authorities choose which flags to apply to routers (relays) [1].
For more information on the topic you can read related discussions in tor relay threads [2], [3].
[1] https://gitweb.torproject.org/torspec.git/tree/dir-spec.txt#n2426 [2] https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-relays/2017-January/011826.html [3] https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-relays/2014-December/005896.html
Cheers, ~Vasilis