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

[Michael Gerstacker]

Hi

Am Do., 5. Sept. 2019 um 04:12 Uhr schrieb Mike Perry <
mikeperry at torproject.org>:

> 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?
>

When i started my first relay i had zero knowledge about Linux so i can
describe my whole experience from a noob position.

I wanted to start to learn about something new and someone told me a
Raspberry Pi is good to start with Linux. Then i had that Pi with Raspbian
and didnt knew what to do with it now.
I found an instruction on google how to install a Tor relay to contribute
to Tor.
It took me more than two weeks with many angry moments followed by many
facepalms but finally my first relay was working.
Now about one year later i operate 25 relays and i love it. I constantly
learn something new and i read everything i can about Tor because its
fascinating and awesome.

It took me months to realize that there is an instruction on your website
how to install a relay. At the beginning i always used some guides which i
found on google because they appear before the instruction site of the
Torproject appears.

If you could point out that the instructions for installing a relay on
Debian are the same like for Raspbian it had safed me many hours because i
thought it will not work if i use the Debian instructions and i thought its
more like a "tweak" to make a relay running on a Pi because on your website
i can find several OSs but nothing about Raspbian.

After i finally understood how to install packages on my Raspberry Pi i was
very happy that it worked and i was afraid to touch anything.
It took me some more months to even realize that the package in the
repositories is not the latest one.
I thought its working like Windows Update where you will automatically get
the latest stable one when you run apt-get upgrade.
After that realization it took me some more months to understand what an
additional repository is and how and why to add it.

I think there is not much you can do against that. Maybe just support the
versions "as short as necessary" because if someone really wants to
understand what is going on then he will take his time to make it working.
I dont know how big that fraction is but maybe there are several people
outside who just dont know that their relay is outdated.

I am subscribed on this mailing-list after i had half of my relays already
running so maybe there are some people who just dont realize that their
relays version is outdated because they still can see traffic on it.
So i think kicking out relays with outdated versions "as fast as useful" is
a good way to show the operator that he is not very helpful anymore.
When they dont see any traffic anymore they either will try to find out why
and upgrade or they will close the relay but i think if they decide to
close the relay they are anyway not very reliable.

To sum it up:
- Make it as easy as possible to find the setup instructions
- Point out that Raspbian is supported too
- Make it more obvious that an operator could be much more useful if he
would take a few minutes to upgrade

I remembered that someone here asked a few months ago how to set up a relay
on Windows.
Out of boredom a few days ago i grabbed a one-month-description VPS with
Windows Server 2012 R2 on it and tried to set up a relay there.
I felt familiar immediatelly even if i had never worked with Windows Server
before and the relay was running after 15 minutes.
F9C203B9FB710FC9C7C45F2CCDF8B626F2320253

There were only three small points where i struggled a little bit because
Tor crashed without telling me why but setting it up on Windows seems to be
as easy as on Linux.
If it helps i can describe the crashes i had or write a ticket about it.

An instruction about setting it up on Windows might be not worth the work
but pointing out that if someone is more familiar with Windows that he
should just try his luck because it will likely work could be helpful too.
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