[tor-relays] Possible to run multiple tor instances from one machine?

[Imre Jonk]

On Wed, 2020-08-12 at 22:42 -0700, Keifer Bly wrote:
> Is it possible to run more than one tor instance on the same machine?

Certainly. You will need to create a torrc configuration file
(/etc/tor/torrc, /etc/tor/torrc2 and so on) for every Tor instance you
want to run, and create a new data directory (/var/lib/tor,
/var/lib/tor2 and so on) as well. Make sure you properly set these
settings:

- DataDirectory must be unique.
- SOCKSPort must be unique (or just disable it by setting it to 0).
- ControlPort must be unique.
- ORPort must be unique.
- DirPort must be unique.
- MyFamily must list the fingerprints of your other relay instances
(but don't do this for bridges).
- ContactInfo must be set on all relay instances.
- It's convenient to make Nickname unique as well.

Note that you can only run two Tor relay instances on one IP address. I
believe that bridges are excluded from this rule.

After that you can spin up the new relay instances with `tor -f
/path/to/torrc`. On OpenBSD I just symlink the rc.d scripts and add the
-f flag, I imagine that something equally simple can be done for
systemd-based systems as well.

Imre
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