[tor-relays] Ext Relay Operators: Please Upgrade to 0.4.7.7!

[Mike Perry]

Tor 0.4.7.7-stable contains a very important performance improvement, 
called Congestion Control.

You can read more about this improvement here:
https://blog.torproject.org/congestion-contrl-047/

The TL;DR is that users of Tor 0.4.7 will experience faster performance 
when using Exits or Onion Services that have upgraded to 0.4.7.

We have packages in available for Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora, CentOS, and BSD:
   - Debian: https://support.torproject.org/apt/tor-deb-repo/
   - Ubuntu: https://support.torproject.org/relay-operators/operators-4/
   - Fedora/CentOS: https://support.torproject.org/rpm/tor-rpm-install/
   - BSD: 
https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-relays/2022-May/020528.html

We would like to have a large fraction of Exit relays upgraded before 
our next Tor Browser Stable Release, on May 31st. Please let us know if 
you have any problems upgrading to this release.

Additionally, while non-Exit relays do not need to upgrade, they will 
notice the effects of congestion control.

All relay operators who pay for bandwidth by the gigabyte may want to 
consider enabling hibernation, to avoid surprise cost increases:
https://support.torproject.org/relay-operators/limit-total-bandwidth/

All relays may also experience higher CPU usage. If this is a problem, 
rate limiting relay bandwidth will also help:
https://support.torproject.org/relay-operators/bandwidth-shaping/

We also recently fixed an issue with overload reporting in 0.4.6.10 and 
0.4.7.7:
https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/core/tor/-/issues/40560

This should mean that there are far fewer false positives in the 
overload reporting on https://metrics.torproject.org/rs.html.

If after upgrading to either of those versions, you still see overload, 
please see:
https://support.torproject.org/relay-operators/relay-bridge-overloaded/


P.S. There is a known warn bug with vanguards-lite on first startup. It 
is harmless: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/core/tor/-/issues/40603

-- 
Mike Perry