[tor-talk] is torrc a manual page now? que?

Roger Dingledine arma at mit.edu
Thu Jul 31 19:13:00 UTC 2014


On Thu, Jul 31, 2014 at 08:18:07PM +0200, Öyvind Saether wrote:
> Thank you for this secret information. Please consider adding it to the
> MANUAL PAGE since I've had my torrc since 2008 and it's not got any of
> that classified information in it. 

Well, it certainly isn't meant to be a secret. You should totally check
out the torrc.sample file that comes with the tarball, or (equivalently)
the torrc file that comes with the deb. It has come a long way since
the last time you looked at it. :)

For reference, here is a copy of the torrc.sample file from Tor
0.1.0.1-rc, released March 28 2005:
https://gitweb.torproject.org/tor.git/blob/fddf560254da197b9e4726b6101f358f4b68e7af:/src/config/torrc.sample.in

> >  I
> > guess we could send a challenge to the email address, and demand a
> > reply, and otherwise set a cap on the capacity that the network will
> > assign you. Seems like that would be another barrier to our volunteer
> > relay operators, but maybe for exit relays it's worth it.
> 
> I don't like this. You are saying you must have a e-mail and reply to
> help out. That is a bad thing. A lot of services these days require you
> to give them (and sometimes verify) a mobile phone number and I
> personally don't use any of those services, sometimes I try to sign up
> for such things but end up backing out because they demand too much
> info. I see no reason why having a valid e-mail and using it to reply
> should be a requirement for helping the Tor network.

I agree -- there are some real downsides to requiring working contact
info for relays.

On the other hand, there are some real downsides to having large relays
where we don't know the operators. We know the operators of many of
the large relays in the network, but there are many more where we don't
know them.

And of course, confirming that some email address can receive email is
not the same as knowing the operators.

So much to do,
--Roger



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