A vote for the amateur relay operator
My vision for the tor project (toropia, if you will) is that running a relay be normal, i.e. part of the ritual of children leaving home for college would be to make sure their parents know how to reboot the tor relay in the basement when the power goes out. But it would be a big plunge for an amateur to set up an exit relay. So when Conrad Rockenhaus offered SWIPEd freeBSD installed relays, it seemed like a chance to get my feet wet. I have no freeBSD experience, but the new torproject directions turned out fine. I'm trusting that Conrad's install will be fine while I learn about hardened freeBSD and get plugged in about security updates. So Conrad gets the grief, and I just run the relay. Maybe I'm not a "real" relay operator for this one, but I think that's okay; I'm contributing to OS diversity, and a new exit relay. When Conrad wrote about getting a court order this week, and got a reply from teor, and said he was getting help with it, my reaction was "as least he seems to be getting help" - a comforting thought for an amateur reading this list who has never seen a court order. --torix Sent with [ProtonMail](https://protonmail.com) Secure Email.
I am in a similiar situation. This time I editing an abuse reply to Trabia Networks. Exit operator must live with that. Less weeks ago I ordered two server in Conrads farm. Perhaps my (or your) server is the bad one and Conrad must pay for it. Thank you Conrad! If you need help, then call for it. Olaf Am 10.09.2018 um 18:00 schrieb torix@protonmail.com:
My vision for the tor project (toropia, if you will) is that running a relay be normal, i.e. part of the ritual of children leaving home for college would be to make sure their parents know how to reboot the tor relay in the basement when the power goes out. But it would be a big plunge for an amateur to set up an exit relay. So when Conrad Rockenhaus offered SWIPEd freeBSD installed relays, it seemed like a chance to get my feet wet. I have no freeBSD experience, but the new torproject directions turned out fine. I'm trusting that Conrad's install will be fine while I learn about hardened freeBSD and get plugged in about security updates. So Conrad gets the grief, and I just run the relay. Maybe I'm not a "real" relay operator for this one, but I think that's okay; I'm contributing to OS diversity, and a new exit relay.
When Conrad wrote about getting a court order this week, and got a reply from teor, and said he was getting help with it, my reaction was "as least he seems to be getting help" - a comforting thought for an amateur reading this list who has never seen a court order.
--torix
Sent with [ProtonMail](https://protonmail.com) Secure Email.
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On Mon, Sep 10, 2018 at 04:00:06PM +0000, torix@protonmail.com wrote: :Maybe I'm not a "real" relay operator for this one, but I think that's okay; I'm contributing to OS diversity, and a new exit relay. You're definitely a real operator. The primary difficulty in being an operator is exposing yourself to the inevitable abuse complaints and secondarily paying for the required compute and network resources. Thankfully I've been able to hide behind my employer's good name for both those things, so perhaps you are more real than I am on that count even though I've been running exits for >10 years (maybe even 15 now?). So thanks and welcome! -Jon
participants (3)
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Jonathan D. Proulx -
Olaf Grimm -
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