Hello tor-relays!
My name is Colin Childs, I have been the support and translation coordinator at the Tor Project for a number of years. I am also a founding director of a TorServers partner named Coldhak here in Canada.
Recently, my role within the Tor Project has changed, and I am starting as the new relay advocate (as well as localization coordinator, until this responsibility can be reassigned). My job will be improving the health / happiness of the relay operator community, expanding the relay operator community, and helping improve the community bonds between operators.
A few of the things I will be working on are:
1. Open a #tor-relays IRC channel (this is now open, everyone should join!) 2. Reach out to realy operator groups / individuals to introduce myself and solicit feedback (beginning today) 3. Plan a relay operators meet-up at PETS in July (details to come in another email) 4. Form a team of trusted technical and legal volunteers able to help operators around the world. 5. Organizing a larger "relay operator summit" event 6. Working with operators to resolve some of the recent issues brought up on this list (DNS provider, DNSSEC, EOL releases, etc..)
While reaching out to operators is point 2 in that list, if you have suggestions or feedback that you'd like to send, please do not hesitate to reach out to me! I would love to hear from all of you with the things you would find most helpful from me / the Tor Project. While I cannot guarantee we can facilitate every request, we will do our best to help!
I look forward to working with all of you in the future, and I hope you're having a great week!
Hello, What IRC server is this on?
On 2018 m. gegužės 16 d. 18:47:21 GMT+03:00, Colin Childs colin@torproject.org wrote:
- Open a #tor-relays IRC channel (this is now open, everyone should
join!)
On Wed, May 16, 2018 at 8:58 PM, pikami tor@pikami.org wrote:
Hello, What IRC server is this on?
irc.oftc.net, where the other channels of the Tor project also reside.
Hi Colin! It is great to see you become more active in the project. Looking forward to see some of these come to fruition.
On Wed, May 16, 2018, 9:47 AM Colin Childs, colin@torproject.org wrote:
Hello tor-relays!
My name is Colin Childs...
Oftc.net! Already 31 users happily idling in the channel.
On Wed, May 16, 2018 at 12:58 PM, pikami tor@pikami.org wrote:
Hello, What IRC server is this on?
I'm usually around.
On Thu, May 17, 2018, 01:57 Dakota Hourie dakotahourie@gmail.com wrote:
Hi Colin! It is great to see you become more active in the project. Looking forward to see some of these come to fruition.
On Wed, May 16, 2018, 9:47 AM Colin Childs, colin@torproject.org wrote:
Hello tor-relays!
My name is Colin Childs...
Oftc.net! Already 31 users happily idling in the channel.
On Wed, May 16, 2018 at 12:58 PM, pikami tor@pikami.org wrote:
Hello, What IRC server is this on?
tor-relays mailing list tor-relays@lists.torproject.org https://lists.torproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tor-relays
Colin Childs:
I would love to hear from all of you with the things you would find most helpful from me / the Tor Project
I believe the most useful tool for relay operators and the tor network as a whole would be to bring back Tor Weather.
I filed it as https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/26124
Full text bellow --------------------------------- TL;DR: I believe Tor Weather is the most efficient way to achieve and maintain a healthy Tor network on the long run.
This is an item on the metrics team road map ("Q4 2018 or later") but maybe the new relay advocate (Colin) can help with this?
Tor Weather has been discontinued on 2016-04-04, see Karsten's email for the reasoning behind it: https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-relays/2016-April/009009.html but as he says "Tor Weather is still a good idea, it just needs somebody to implement it."
How Tor Weather looked like: https://web.archive.org/web/20141004055709/https://weather.torproject.org/su...
**Motivation**
If a relay disappears today, it is unlikely that anyone will notice or even send an email to the operator unless it is a big one.
Relay operators and the entire tor network would benefit from a Tor Weather service because it notifies relay operators when the state of their relays changed (and more). This will increase the likelihood that relay operators notice problems and actually mitigate the problem otherwise there is no "user feedback" since tor can cope with disappearing relays quite well. It also * shows the relay operator that someone actually cares if their relays go down or become outdated or have another problem * gives the operator relay best-practices information.
**Expected Effects**
If enough operators subscribe to such a service: * relays might become more long lived / the churn rate might decrease * the fraction of relays running outdated tor versions might decrease * the fraction of exits with broken DNS might decrease
It also has the benefit of being able to contact relay operators * completely automatically * even if they choose to not set a public ContactInfo string in their torrc files.
**ideas for selectable notification types** (sorted by importance)
Support subscribing via single relay FP or MyFamily groups (should not need any subscription change if a relay gets added to the family).
[ ] Email me when my node is down How long before we send a notification? ________ [ ] email me when my relay is affected by a security vulnerability [ ] email me when my relay runs an end-of-life version of tor
[ ] email me when my relay runs an outdated tor version (note: this should depend on the related onionoo bugs to avoid emailing alpha relay people)
[ ] email me when my exit relay fails to resolve hostnames (DNS failure)
[ ] email me when my relay looses the [ ] stable, [ ] guard, [ ] exit flag
[ ] email me when my MyFamily configuration is broken (meaning: non-mutual config detected or relay with same contactInfo but no MyFamily) [ ] email me when you detect issues with my relay [ ] email me with suggestions for configuration improvements for my relay (only once per improvement)
[ ] email me when my relay is on the top [ ] 20 [ ] 50 [ ] 100 relays list
[ ] email me with monthly/quarterly status information that includes information like what my position in the overall relay list is (sorted by CW), how much traffic my relay did during the last month and what fraction of the months time your relay was included in consensus as running (this shows information on how many % of the months' consensuses this relay has been included and running) [ ] aggregate emails for all my relays into a single digest email [ ] email me about new relay requirements [ ] email me about tor relay operator events
* Write a specification describing the meaning of each checkbox
**Security and Privacy Implications**
The service stores email addresses of potential tor relay operators, they should be kept private and safeguarded, but a passive observer can collect them by watching outbound email traffic if no TLS is used. Suggest to use a dedicated email address for this service.
**Additional Ideas**
* easy: integration into tor: show the URL pointing to the new Tor Weather service like the current link to the lifecycle blogpost when tor starts and detects to be a new relay * Provide an uptimerobot-style status page for relay operators using onionoo data
Hello Nusenu,
Thank you for bringing this up and filing the ticket, this definitely sounds like something that should be brought back in some form. I’m going to look things over, review the history of Tor Weather and then make a plan for moving this forward.
A monitoring service (like Tor Weather) has also been requested from a few other operators as well; so I think this is definitely something that will make the community happier as a whole.
On May 17, 2018, at 2:44 PM, nusenu nusenu-lists@riseup.net wrote:
Colin Childs:
I would love to hear from all of you with the things you would find most helpful from me / the Tor Project
I believe the most useful tool for relay operators and the tor network as a whole would be to bring back Tor Weather.
I filed it as https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/26124
Full text bellow
TL;DR: I believe Tor Weather is the most efficient way to achieve and maintain a healthy Tor network on the long run.
This is an item on the metrics team road map ("Q4 2018 or later") but maybe the new relay advocate (Colin) can help with this?
Tor Weather has been discontinued on 2016-04-04, see Karsten's email for the reasoning behind it: https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-relays/2016-April/009009.html but as he says "Tor Weather is still a good idea, it just needs somebody to implement it."
How Tor Weather looked like: https://web.archive.org/web/20141004055709/https://weather.torproject.org/su...
**Motivation**
If a relay disappears today, it is unlikely that anyone will notice or even send an email to the operator unless it is a big one.
Relay operators and the entire tor network would benefit from a Tor Weather service because it notifies relay operators when the state of their relays changed (and more). This will increase the likelihood that relay operators notice problems and actually mitigate the problem otherwise there is no "user feedback" since tor can cope with disappearing relays quite well. It also
- shows the relay operator that someone actually cares if their relays go down or become outdated or have another problem
- gives the operator relay best-practices information.
**Expected Effects**
If enough operators subscribe to such a service:
- relays might become more long lived / the churn rate might decrease
- the fraction of relays running outdated tor versions might decrease
- the fraction of exits with broken DNS might decrease
It also has the benefit of being able to contact relay operators
- completely automatically
- even if they choose to not set a public ContactInfo string in their torrc files.
**ideas for selectable notification types** (sorted by importance)
Support subscribing via single relay FP or MyFamily groups (should not need any subscription change if a relay gets added to the family).
[ ] Email me when my node is down How long before we send a notification? ________ [ ] email me when my relay is affected by a security vulnerability [ ] email me when my relay runs an end-of-life version of tor
[ ] email me when my relay runs an outdated tor version (note: this should depend on the related onionoo bugs to avoid emailing alpha relay people)
[ ] email me when my exit relay fails to resolve hostnames (DNS failure)
[ ] email me when my relay looses the [ ] stable, [ ] guard, [ ] exit flag
[ ] email me when my MyFamily configuration is broken (meaning: non-mutual config detected or relay with same contactInfo but no MyFamily) [ ] email me when you detect issues with my relay [ ] email me with suggestions for configuration improvements for my relay (only once per improvement)
[ ] email me when my relay is on the top [ ] 20 [ ] 50 [ ] 100 relays list
[ ] email me with monthly/quarterly status information that includes information like what my position in the overall relay list is (sorted by CW), how much traffic my relay did during the last month and what fraction of the months time your relay was included in consensus as running (this shows information on how many % of the months' consensuses this relay has been included and running) [ ] aggregate emails for all my relays into a single digest email [ ] email me about new relay requirements [ ] email me about tor relay operator events
- Write a specification describing the meaning of each checkbox
**Security and Privacy Implications**
The service stores email addresses of potential tor relay operators, they should be kept private and safeguarded, but a passive observer can collect them by watching outbound email traffic if no TLS is used. Suggest to use a dedicated email address for this service.
**Additional Ideas**
- easy: integration into tor: show the URL pointing to the new Tor Weather service like the current link to the lifecycle blogpost when tor starts and detects to be a new relay
- Provide an uptimerobot-style status page for relay operators using onionoo data
-- https://mastodon.social/@nusenu twitter: @nusenu_
tor-relays mailing list tor-relays@lists.torproject.org https://lists.torproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tor-relays
I don't know if it's helpful, but I use pulseway.com to monitor my relay (aand all of my other servers).
On Thu, May 17, 2018 at 5:40 PM Colin Childs colin@torproject.org wrote:
Hello Nusenu,
Thank you for bringing this up and filing the ticket, this definitely sounds like something that should be brought back in some form. I’m going to look things over, review the history of Tor Weather and then make a plan for moving this forward.
A monitoring service (like Tor Weather) has also been requested from a few other operators as well; so I think this is definitely something that will make the community happier as a whole.
On May 17, 2018, at 2:44 PM, nusenu nusenu-lists@riseup.net wrote:
Colin Childs:
I would love to hear from all of you with the things you would find most helpful from me / the Tor Project
I believe the most useful tool for relay operators and the tor network as a whole would be to bring back Tor Weather.
I filed it as https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/26124
Full text bellow
TL;DR: I believe Tor Weather is the most efficient way to achieve and
maintain a healthy Tor network on the long run.
This is an item on the metrics team road map ("Q4 2018 or later") but
maybe the new relay advocate (Colin) can help with this?
Tor Weather has been discontinued on 2016-04-04, see Karsten's email for the reasoning behind it: https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-relays/2016-April/009009.html but as he says "Tor Weather is still a good idea, it just needs somebody
to implement it."
How Tor Weather looked like:
https://web.archive.org/web/20141004055709/https://weather.torproject.org/su...
**Motivation**
If a relay disappears today, it is unlikely that anyone will notice or
even send an email to the operator unless it is a big one.
Relay operators and the entire tor network would benefit from a Tor
Weather service because it notifies relay operators when the state of their relays changed (and more). This will increase the likelihood that relay operators notice problems and actually mitigate the problem otherwise there is no "user feedback" since tor can cope with disappearing relays quite well.
It also
- shows the relay operator that someone actually cares if their relays
go down or become outdated or have another problem
- gives the operator relay best-practices information.
**Expected Effects**
If enough operators subscribe to such a service:
- relays might become more long lived / the churn rate might decrease
- the fraction of relays running outdated tor versions might decrease
- the fraction of exits with broken DNS might decrease
It also has the benefit of being able to contact relay operators
- completely automatically
- even if they choose to not set a public ContactInfo string in their
torrc files.
**ideas for selectable notification types** (sorted by importance)
Support subscribing via single relay FP or MyFamily groups (should not
need any subscription change if a relay gets added to the family).
[ ] Email me when my node is down How long before we send a notification? ________ [ ] email me when my relay is affected by a security vulnerability [ ] email me when my relay runs an end-of-life version of tor
[ ] email me when my relay runs an outdated tor version (note: this
should depend on the related onionoo bugs to avoid emailing alpha relay people)
[ ] email me when my exit relay fails to resolve hostnames (DNS failure)
[ ] email me when my relay looses the [ ] stable, [ ] guard, [ ] exit
flag
[ ] email me when my MyFamily configuration is broken (meaning:
non-mutual config detected or relay with same contactInfo but no MyFamily)
[ ] email me when you detect issues with my relay [ ] email me with suggestions for configuration improvements for my
relay (only once per improvement)
[ ] email me when my relay is on the top [ ] 20 [ ] 50 [ ] 100 relays
list
[ ] email me with monthly/quarterly status information that includes
information like what my position in the overall relay list is (sorted by CW), how much traffic my relay did during the last month and what fraction of the months time your relay was included in consensus as running (this shows information on how many % of the months' consensuses this relay has been included and running)
[ ] aggregate emails for all my relays into a single digest email [ ] email me about new relay requirements [ ] email me about tor relay operator events
- Write a specification describing the meaning of each checkbox
**Security and Privacy Implications**
The service stores email addresses of potential tor relay operators,
they should be kept private and safeguarded, but a passive observer can collect them by watching outbound email traffic if no TLS is used. Suggest to use a dedicated email address for this service.
**Additional Ideas**
- easy: integration into tor: show the URL pointing to the new Tor
Weather service like the current link to the lifecycle blogpost when tor starts and detects to be a new relay
- Provide an uptimerobot-style status page for relay operators using
onionoo data
-- https://mastodon.social/@nusenu twitter: @nusenu_
tor-relays mailing list tor-relays@lists.torproject.org https://lists.torproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tor-relays
tor-relays mailing list tor-relays@lists.torproject.org https://lists.torproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tor-relays
I have an email draft about ideas for Colin I haven't finished and Tor Weather was going to be top of the list. So add another voice to the crowd.
-tom
On 17 May 2018 at 16:48, Matthew Glennon matthew@glennon.online wrote:
I don't know if it's helpful, but I use pulseway.com to monitor my relay (aand all of my other servers).
On Thu, May 17, 2018 at 5:40 PM Colin Childs colin@torproject.org wrote:
Hello Nusenu,
Thank you for bringing this up and filing the ticket, this definitely sounds like something that should be brought back in some form. I’m going to look things over, review the history of Tor Weather and then make a plan for moving this forward.
A monitoring service (like Tor Weather) has also been requested from a few other operators as well; so I think this is definitely something that will make the community happier as a whole.
On May 17, 2018, at 2:44 PM, nusenu nusenu-lists@riseup.net wrote:
Colin Childs:
I would love to hear from all of you with the things you would find most helpful from me / the Tor Project
I believe the most useful tool for relay operators and the tor network as a whole would be to bring back Tor Weather.
I filed it as https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/26124
Full text bellow
TL;DR: I believe Tor Weather is the most efficient way to achieve and maintain a healthy Tor network on the long run.
This is an item on the metrics team road map ("Q4 2018 or later") but maybe the new relay advocate (Colin) can help with this?
Tor Weather has been discontinued on 2016-04-04, see Karsten's email for the reasoning behind it: https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-relays/2016-April/009009.html but as he says "Tor Weather is still a good idea, it just needs somebody to implement it."
How Tor Weather looked like:
https://web.archive.org/web/20141004055709/https://weather.torproject.org/su...
**Motivation**
If a relay disappears today, it is unlikely that anyone will notice or even send an email to the operator unless it is a big one.
Relay operators and the entire tor network would benefit from a Tor Weather service because it notifies relay operators when the state of their relays changed (and more). This will increase the likelihood that relay operators notice problems and actually mitigate the problem otherwise there is no "user feedback" since tor can cope with disappearing relays quite well. It also
- shows the relay operator that someone actually cares if their relays
go down or become outdated or have another problem
- gives the operator relay best-practices information.
**Expected Effects**
If enough operators subscribe to such a service:
- relays might become more long lived / the churn rate might decrease
- the fraction of relays running outdated tor versions might decrease
- the fraction of exits with broken DNS might decrease
It also has the benefit of being able to contact relay operators
- completely automatically
- even if they choose to not set a public ContactInfo string in their
torrc files.
**ideas for selectable notification types** (sorted by importance)
Support subscribing via single relay FP or MyFamily groups (should not need any subscription change if a relay gets added to the family).
[ ] Email me when my node is down How long before we send a notification? ________ [ ] email me when my relay is affected by a security vulnerability [ ] email me when my relay runs an end-of-life version of tor
[ ] email me when my relay runs an outdated tor version (note: this should depend on the related onionoo bugs to avoid emailing alpha relay people)
[ ] email me when my exit relay fails to resolve hostnames (DNS failure)
[ ] email me when my relay looses the [ ] stable, [ ] guard, [ ] exit flag
[ ] email me when my MyFamily configuration is broken (meaning: non-mutual config detected or relay with same contactInfo but no MyFamily) [ ] email me when you detect issues with my relay [ ] email me with suggestions for configuration improvements for my relay (only once per improvement)
[ ] email me when my relay is on the top [ ] 20 [ ] 50 [ ] 100 relays list
[ ] email me with monthly/quarterly status information that includes information like what my position in the overall relay list is (sorted by CW), how much traffic my relay did during the last month and what fraction of the months time your relay was included in consensus as running (this shows information on how many % of the months' consensuses this relay has been included and running) [ ] aggregate emails for all my relays into a single digest email [ ] email me about new relay requirements [ ] email me about tor relay operator events
- Write a specification describing the meaning of each checkbox
**Security and Privacy Implications**
The service stores email addresses of potential tor relay operators, they should be kept private and safeguarded, but a passive observer can collect them by watching outbound email traffic if no TLS is used. Suggest to use a dedicated email address for this service.
**Additional Ideas**
- easy: integration into tor: show the URL pointing to the new Tor
Weather service like the current link to the lifecycle blogpost when tor starts and detects to be a new relay
- Provide an uptimerobot-style status page for relay operators using
onionoo data
-- https://mastodon.social/@nusenu twitter: @nusenu_
tor-relays mailing list tor-relays@lists.torproject.org https://lists.torproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tor-relays
tor-relays mailing list tor-relays@lists.torproject.org https://lists.torproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tor-relays
-- Matthew Glennon matthew@glennon.online PGP Signing Available Upon Request https://keybase.io/crazysane
tor-relays mailing list tor-relays@lists.torproject.org https://lists.torproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tor-relays
Dear Colin,
Perhaps your new role would cover this - I understand from the list that the uneven distribution of the Tor network around the world is a concern. My first thought is that I should run a relay in India, which has a robust internet, and speaks English. However, I don't know whom to contact over there to set something up. I was wondering if it might be worth producing a list of ISPs and urls in preferred geographically distributed countries.
Maybe we have this resource already, but the closest page I've found is the Good/Bad ISPs page: https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/wiki/doc/GoodBadISPs but that includes mostly countries with high percentages of tor relays, and is mostly about ISP responses to exit nodes.
If I were a new person who wanted to run a relay, I would probably use the cloud provider I know about or have connections with already. If I had a list of providers/urls in other countries, however, there would be a better chance I would set it up somewhere else.
Just thinking..
--Torix
Sent with ProtonMail Secure Email.
‐‐‐‐‐‐‐ Original Message ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐
On May 16, 2018 11:47 AM, Colin Childs colin@torproject.org wrote:
Hello tor-relays!
My name is Colin Childs, I have been the support and translation coordinator at the Tor Project for a number of years. I am also a founding director of a TorServers partner named Coldhak here in Canada.
Recently, my role within the Tor Project has changed, and I am starting as the new relay advocate (as well as localization coordinator, until this responsibility can be reassigned). My job will be improving the health / happiness of the relay operator community, expanding the relay operator community, and helping improve the community bonds between operators.
A few of the things I will be working on are:
Open a #tor-relays IRC channel (this is now open, everyone should join!)
Reach out to realy operator groups / individuals to introduce myself and solicit feedback (beginning today)
Plan a relay operators meet-up at PETS in July (details to come in another email)
Form a team of trusted technical and legal volunteers able to help operators around the world.
Organizing a larger "relay operator summit" event
Working with operators to resolve some of the recent issues brought up on this list (DNS provider, DNSSEC, EOL releases, etc..)
While reaching out to operators is point 2 in that list, if you have suggestions or feedback that you'd like to send, please do not hesitate to reach out to me! I would love to hear from all of you with the things you would find most helpful from me / the Tor Project. While I cannot guarantee we can facilitate every request, we will do our best to help!
I look forward to working with all of you in the future, and I hope you're having a great week!
tor-relays mailing list
tor-relays@lists.torproject.org
https://lists.torproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tor-relays
Hi Torix,
Thank you for your ideas, I have made note of this and will review this list early next week.
I hope you all have a fantastic weekend!
On May 17, 2018, at 4:44 PM, torix@protonmail.com wrote:
Dear Colin,
Perhaps your new role would cover this - I understand from the list that the uneven distribution of the Tor network around the world is a concern. My first thought is that I should run a relay in India, which has a robust internet, and speaks English. However, I don't know whom to contact over there to set something up. I was wondering if it might be worth producing a list of ISPs and urls in preferred geographically distributed countries.
Maybe we have this resource already, but the closest page I've found is the Good/Bad ISPs page: https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/wiki/doc/GoodBadISPs but that includes mostly countries with high percentages of tor relays, and is mostly about ISP responses to exit nodes.
If I were a new person who wanted to run a relay, I would probably use the cloud provider I know about or have connections with already. If I had a list of providers/urls in other countries, however, there would be a better chance I would set it up somewhere else.
Just thinking..
--Torix
Sent with ProtonMail Secure Email.
‐‐‐‐‐‐‐ Original Message ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐
On May 16, 2018 11:47 AM, Colin Childs colin@torproject.org wrote:
Hello tor-relays!
My name is Colin Childs, I have been the support and translation coordinator at the Tor Project for a number of years. I am also a founding director of a TorServers partner named Coldhak here in Canada.
Recently, my role within the Tor Project has changed, and I am starting as the new relay advocate (as well as localization coordinator, until this responsibility can be reassigned). My job will be improving the health / happiness of the relay operator community, expanding the relay operator community, and helping improve the community bonds between operators.
A few of the things I will be working on are:
Open a #tor-relays IRC channel (this is now open, everyone should join!)
Reach out to realy operator groups / individuals to introduce myself and solicit feedback (beginning today)
Plan a relay operators meet-up at PETS in July (details to come in another email)
Form a team of trusted technical and legal volunteers able to help operators around the world.
Organizing a larger "relay operator summit" event
Working with operators to resolve some of the recent issues brought up on this list (DNS provider, DNSSEC, EOL releases, etc..)
While reaching out to operators is point 2 in that list, if you have suggestions or feedback that you'd like to send, please do not hesitate to reach out to me! I would love to hear from all of you with the things you would find most helpful from me / the Tor Project. While I cannot guarantee we can facilitate every request, we will do our best to help!
I look forward to working with all of you in the future, and I hope you're having a great week!
tor-relays mailing list
tor-relays@lists.torproject.org
https://lists.torproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tor-relays
tor-relays mailing list tor-relays@lists.torproject.org https://lists.torproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tor-relays
tor-relays@lists.torproject.org
-
Colin Childs -
Dakota Hourie -
I -
Matthew Glennon -
Max Zettlmeißl -
nusenu -
pikami -
Tom Ritter -
torix＠protonmail.com