On Sun, 22 Jan 2012 05:58:45 -0500 Roger Dingledine arma@mit.edu wrote:

On Thu, Jan 19, 2012 at 08:35:30PM -0500, Steve Snyder wrote:

...

New operator of a Tor bridge here. How can I tell that it is being used?

With a regular relay I can look up the stats on TorStatus, or I can see that there are n current connections. But a bridge won't be published, and the lower volume of traffic means that there may not be many active connections at any given time.

So how do I know if it is working? I mean beyond the absence of any errors logged?

Answer 1: absence of any errors logged. Then just trust. :)

Answer 2: Use a Tor controller. Vidalia has a "who has used my bridge lately?" button you can push to learn by-country statistics. Or try 'arm' if you prefer command-line controllers.

Answer 3: We publish sanitized bridge descriptors on the metrics site: https://metrics.torproject.org/data.html#bridgedesc We're working on usable interfaces to let you look up the descriptor for your bridge (including the usage statistics that it publishes). Stay tuned.

Answer 4: this isn't exactly what you want, yet it still provides relevant information. Use the HeartbeatPeriod command in your torrc file to provide usage information on a periodic basis with your choice of period. The message logged gives the uptime in days and hours and a rounded figure for bytes sent and bytes received since initialization, so if your node is *only* used as a bridge, these messages will give you rough idea of your bridge's usage. Note, of course, that some of the traffic will be stuff that your node needs for its operation, e.g., a consensus file. Be advised that each period incurs about 1 s of delay in logging the information, so if you want information every hour exactly, for example, you need to specify a period of 3599 s, not 3600 s. Note, too, that the default period is 21,600 s, or 6 hr. Again, "HearbeatPeriod 21599 seconds" should yield a message logged every six hours exactly.

Scott Bennett, Comm. ASMELG, CFIAG ********************************************************************** * Internet: bennett at cs.niu.edu * *--------------------------------------------------------------------* * "A well regulated and disciplined militia, is at all times a good * * objection to the introduction of that bane of all free governments * * -- a standing army." * * -- Gov. John Hancock, New York Journal, 28 January 1790 * **********************************************************************