[tor-dev] Tor Relay Setup Wizard

Damian Johnson atagar1 at gmail.com
Thu Jul 14 03:52:07 UTC 2011


Thanks, Karsten!

> Or does this wizard start automatically when arm starts?

If tor is installed but not currently running on the control port then
arm starts the wizard.

> In that case,
> setting "Internal Relay" as the default could be problematic.  If people
> use arm on their clients, they shouldn't be tricked into becoming a
> relay only because that's the default.  They should know what they're
> doing when setting up a relay.  But 90% of all users go with the
> default, so if "Internal Relay" is the default, they'll just pick that
> and hope for the best.  (Ignore this comment if the wizard is explicitly
> called "Tor Relay Setup Wizard" and if people need to actively start it.)

I disagree. For the network to scale it needs some portion of its
userbase to be relays. There's certainly use cases where that isn't
practical (either when it's a burden or they need to hide the fact
that they're using tor), but for just about anything else operating a
middle-hop relay is an easy and complaint-free way of helping. I kinda
like having people opt-out of being a relay since it makes them aware
when they're using the network without contributing to it. Also,
weren't we talking earlier about making people bridges by default in
Vidalia?

That said, I'll change the default if people would rather it be something else.

> Missing word: "This is a safe and easy _way_ of making the Tor network
> better."

Thanks, fixed

> I wonder if there's a short torproject.org URL containing tips for exit
> relay operators that you can show users here.

Ah, I was wondering when someone would mention that. I made two simple
landing pages with resources for wizard users...
http://www.atagar.com/torUsageTips/
http://www.atagar.com/torExitTips/

I did it this way since...
- it needed to be short urls (originally I was planning trac wikis)
- I could make the site look just how I wanted, my goal being
something minimal that draws eyes to the content which the dark
background does
- it kinda seemed fitting since this is where arm's homepage resides

However, in the long run I agree that these should be torproject.org
pages (for the recognizable url, translations, and since it provides
https).

Cheers! -Damian


More information about the tor-dev mailing list