[tor-relays] Does Tor itself estimate how it can run as quota-utilizing as possible?

telekobold torproject-ml at telekobold.de
Sun Oct 1 17:54:02 UTC 2023


Hello together,

today I apparently discovered an interesting feature of Tor I wasn't 
aware of:

I'm running two relays at a large provider's data center having 
20TB/month free outgoing traffic for each relay. However, this quota is 
often exhausted before the end of a month. In order to provide the Tor 
project with some bandwidth all the time, I configured "AccountingMax 20 
TB" and "AccountingStart month 1 00:00" and, for the last few months, I 
used to switch off one of the relays on the first of a month and turn it 
on again a few days after the beginning of the month, so that one of the 
two relays is running all the time. I also connected the two relays 
using the "MyFamily" flag.

Until last month, each of the relays simply continued to run after the 
end of the month. Today, however, I wondered why one of the relays shut 
itself down apparently which did not change after a restart. A look into 
/var/log/tor/notices.log provided the following entries:

Oct 01 16:58:29.000 [notice] Configured hibernation.  This interval 
began at 2023-10-01 00:00:00; the scheduled wake-up time is 2023-10-05 
06:06:25; we expect to exhaust our quota for this interval around 
2023-10-29 04:23:25; the next interval begins at 2023-11-01 00:00:00 
(all times local)
[...]
Oct 01 16:58:49.000 [notice] Commencing hibernation. We will wake up at 
2023-10-05 06:06:25 local time.
Oct 01 16:58:49.000 [notice] Going dormant. Blowing away remaining 
connections.

So apparently Tor learned from my behavior and calculated itself when to 
turn itself off and on again in order to use as much quota as possible 
based on the bandwidth used and/or some other metrics so I don't have to 
do this manually in future?

Kind regards
telekobold


More information about the tor-relays mailing list