[tor-relays] Obfs4 Bridge/Relay Issue

[Philipp Winter]

On Mon, Dec 09, 2019 at 07:05:44PM +0000, texasbuckeye at riseup.net wrote:
> I have been trying to run a relay/obfs4 bridge from my Macbook (macOS
> Catalina 10.15.1) for some time now.

If your laptop isn't online 24/7, I recommend against running a bridge.
A snowflake browser proxy is a better option because downtimes don't
affect user experience as much:
<https://snowflake.torproject.org>

> I've tried setting up my ORPorts to 80, 443, 9050, auto, and many
> others. I use Bitdefender as my antivirus software (which doesn't
> really show open/closed/used ports; nor does the built-in firewall in
> System Preferences in macOS. Below is my torrc file and log files
> (from Console). If you see any mistakes or any reasons why I cannot
> get the obsf4 bridge or relay to run please let me know. I have been
> trying to get this to work for a few months now. I upgraded to Tor
> 0.4.1.6 to see if that makes a difference and so far nothing has
> changed. Any assistance that you could give would be greatly
> appreciated. Thank you in advance for your assistance.

You may have to explicitly whitelist ports in your laptop firewall and
your home router.  Again, if your laptop isn't online 24/7, just run a
snowflake proxy.  It has the added benefit of not relying on forwarded
ports -- all you need to do is install the browser extension.

Cheers,
Philipp