[tor-relays] How can I tell if my bridge is working?

[Scott Bennett]

     On Sun, 22 Jan 2012 05:58:45 -0500 Roger Dingledine <arma at 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
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