[tor-relays] Operator straw poll: Reasons why you use Tor LTS versions?

teor teor at riseup.net
Thu Sep 5 02:43:24 UTC 2019


Hi Mike,

Here's some other reasons that might affect a few operators:

> On 5 Sep 2019, at 12:11, Mike Perry <mikeperry at torproject.org> wrote:
> 
> Unfortunately, we still have something like 2500 relays on either Tor
> 0.2.9-LTS or Tor 0.3.5-LTS.
> 
> What are the reasons for this? My guess is the top 5 most common
> responses are:
> 
> 1. "I didn't know that Debian's backports repo has latest-stable Tor!"
> 2. "I didn't see the Tor Project repos mentioned in Tor's Relay docs!"
> 3. "I'm running a distribution that Tor Project doesn't have repos for."
> 4. "I rolled my own custom Tor from git and forgot about it."
> 5. "My relay machine was not getting any updates at all. Oops."
> 
> Does anyone have a reason that they think many other relay operators
> also share?

6. When I tried to update, it didn't work with my old config
7. I need features that only exist in older Tors
      - I can think of Tor2web, there may be others
8. I am maintaining research or other patches against tor, and rebases
   are difficult

> How can we fix that for you, or at least, how can we make it easier to
> run the very latest stable series Tor on your relay?

The answers are probably something like:
6. Provide better relay operator support, and direct me to those support
   channels in the log messages, when my relay fails to launch
7. Support old features for longer
8. Stop refactoring so much code

T


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