[tor-relays] Feature request to aide bridge operators

[Roger Dingledine]

On Fri, May 01, 2020 at 09:28:09PM +0000, nottryingtobelame at protonmail.com wrote:
> I brought up a new bridge and thought everything was fine according to the logs (OR port accessible, check, server descriptor published, check, etc.). I didn't see any activity on it after awhile, so I tried to test it and was unable to connect. Turns out, I forgot to open the randomized server transport port.
> 
> I think it would be really nice if there was a log entry confirming the OBFS4 port is open and accessible. Currently the only entry you get related to this is "[notice] Registered server transport 'obfs4' at '[::]:35375'".
> 
> Wondering how the community feels about this. Thanks.

Yes, we would love to have this feature, but nobody has built it.

That's partly because testing the ORPort is relatively easy, because the
Tor program speaks the Tor protocol; but testing the obfs4 port is harder,
because the obfs4 server side doesn't usually do client things too.

Here are two tickets to watch:
https://bugs.torproject.org/30477
https://bugs.torproject.org/31874
...or you don't have to watch, you can jump in and help. :)

In the mean time, also check out the "bridge scan" tool that phw put up:
https://bridges.torproject.org/scan/
which is linked from the instructions in e.g.
https://community.torproject.org/relay/setup/bridge/debian-ubuntu/

Thanks,
--Roger