[tor-dev] The Torouter project - where are we now?

[Runa A. Sandvik]

Hi everyone,

I am trying to figure out how we can move the Torouter project
forward. In this email, I will try to summarize the current status of
this project.

The Torouter project has a total of four bugs in Trac. These are
#2334, #2376, #2370 and #2596.

#2334: Torouter on Buffalo breaks with large cached-descriptors[.new]
files. The quick and easy solution here is to attach a USB stick to
the router and use it as Tor's data directory. However, it would be
great if someone could take a look at this and figure out a way to
solve it.

#2376: Torouter on OpenWrt shouldn't have its data directory in /tmp/.
The problem with having Tor's data directory in /tmp is that whenever
Torouter is rebooted, Tor generates new keys and gets a new
fingerprint.

There are a couple of different ways to solve this problem; Karsten
suggested that we could modify OpenWrt to stop creating a /tmp
partition. This probably means that we will have to ship our own
OpenWrt image. I'm thinking that another option would be to modify the
Tor-OpenWrt-package to use / as the data directory instead of /tmp.
However, I wonder if 64M (no matter how it's partitioned) of space on
the Buffalo router is insufficient as long as #2334 remains open.

#2370: Torouter basic Web UI for OpenWrt. I haven't tried the web
interface myself, but development seems to be moving along nicely. I'm
not sure what the remaining steps are, other than packaging it as
tor-ui (or similar) for OpenWrt.

#2596: Figure out a better name than "torouter". Andrew thinks we
should come up with a better name for this project, one that does not
have "Tor" in the name. Suggestions?

The Torouter project also has some open questions (some are mentioned
on https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/wiki/TheOnionRouter/Torouter
as well):

1. How can we make sure that the version of Tor in OpenWrt is always
up to date? Should we set up our own OpenWrt repository? Right now,
the version of Tor in OpenWrt is 0.2.1.26. Also, should we offer
packages for both stable and unstable?

2. We want to collect statistics, which means that we need to ship a
GeoIP file as well. I'm thinking we should create a tor-geoipdb
package for OpenWrt. Thoughts?

3. Do we want one Tor process for bridging and one for the transparent
wifi network? I think this sounds good, if the router can handle it.
If not, then just running a bridge is ok too.

Have I missed anything important? Are there any other packages that we
should include in OpenWrt? Other comments or suggestions? If you have
more information or would like to help out, please let me know.

Thanks,

-- 
Runa A. Sandvik