[tor-relays] Auto-detect and enable IPv6 // Re: Please enable IPv6 on your relay!

Roman Mamedov rm at romanrm.net
Fri May 22 14:29:43 UTC 2015


On Fri, 22 May 2015 13:31:02 +0000
Speak Freely <when2plus2is5 at riseup.net> wrote:

> Uhh, I would like to point out that it would be exceptionally stupid
> to have Tor autoconfigure IP addresses, regardless of whether it's
> IPv4 or IPv6.

On IPv4 it currently does. There is zero rationale as to why IPv6 must be
different from IPv4 in this aspect.

> What if I want to run a webserver on one IP address, and Tor on
> another? What if I decide to also run a mail server on a third IP
> address? What if I want to run an Onion Service? What if I have a
> beefy system with quad 100mbit connections and want to run 4 Tor
> relays on the same system? What about a complicated network setup that
> uses VMs and requires punching through NAT and port forwarding through
> two firewalls to the outside world? Does Apache correctly guess which
> IP you want to use, when there are multiple choices? Does your
> favourite mail server *know* which IP address to use? NO! So why
> should Tor be made of fairy dust?

An option to explicitly specify the bind IP is already there for IPv4. Nobody
is against having an option to specify the IP in IPv6 too, if you need that.

> Write a script if it's such a problem! Learn to love sed. This is a
> non-problem. This is trivial. You're running 15 relays

I also run an IPv6 advocacy website [1], so I have somewhat of a vested
interest in seeing IPv6 deployed in a solid fashion, i.e. transparently for
the end-users, not bringing in a requirement of more silly manual busywork with
config files, or coding up elaborate scaffolding for it themselves.

Sure I could write a shell script (hey I have one to auto-update TorFamily!),
but in this case it just feels terrible, having to use a dirty workaround for
a glaring and unexplainable (to me) deficiency, something that should and
easily could have been implemented right in the first place. (Before you
ask, sorry I am not really a C coder so can't send in a patch).

[1] https://version6.ru/en/ipv6-for-freedom

-- 
With respect,
Roman
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