[tor-relays] Newbie Messed up Relay Setup

[tor-relays at acanthephyra.net]

Hi,

On Fri, 5 Aug 2011, flgcrz wrote:

> Is this the right place to post if I'm having difficulties?
Yep, although it might be best to also contact irc.oftc.net #tor for
configuration issues (since you get faster replies there).

> There are I believe 2 issues.
> The first I think is that the original references to my keys have been 
deleted.
Do you know where your original keys are? The default location is
/var/lib/tor/. Look in your torrc for the option "DataDirectory", this is
the one that'll be used. Although it shouldn't be much of a problem if
it's deleted, you're just losing your old identity (and if you still use
the same nickname for the node, this might be considered an impersonation
attempt).

> The second is I think something to do with the setup I have for 
ControlPort.
>
> I don't think its a firewall issue. I am running a firewall locally
> and have port forwarding setup on my wireless router for 9001 and 9030
>
The control port is used to control your tor instance (hence the name) and
shouldn't be made available to anything but localhost (unless you know why
and secure it properly, but generally it's a bad idea). So please don't
forward your ControlPort ;) (unless you set ControlListenAddress, it will
be bound only to localhost anyway)

I'm guessing you want to use 9001 as ORPort (incoming for regular OR
traffic) and 9030 for incoming directory traffic? (which is the default)

Don't worry about the errors in your log regarding the IP, you will likely
get your public IP from a dirserv after a few seconds. Look for lines
containing "Guessed our  IP address as".


The question now is, what exactly isn't working as intended? Is the relay
not forwarding traffic? (patience, consensus propagates slowly)
Can you browse over Tor yourself?

> I also don't know a lot about encryption so I am hesitant to post the
> details of my logs on a public list.

It shouldn't be much of a problem usually (tor scrubs a lot of sensitive
stuff and since there's no reason to dump keys to the log, it doesn't do
that).

> I've messed things up so if this is too much of a pain is there a way
> to just wipe out old keys and start a new relay from scratch?
Delete the contents of your DataDirectory, done. The torrc will stay the
same, though. All this does is wipe everything tor has cached (e.g. the
status of the Tor network), fingerprints (in other words, the identity
of the node) and hidden service information.

Cheers,

Manuel