On 7/29/19 08:08, Matt Traudt wrote:

On 7/29/19 07:44, clive.jenson@tutanota.com wrote:

...

I built tor from source and am running it as a relay (not exit node) and also as a directory server. It is my understanding that after a while I should experience V2 hidden services publishing their descriptors to me (each hidden service picks 6 directory servers at random to publish their descriptor to). How can I tell if this is happening? Can I (temporarily, for debugging purposes) view the descriptors being published to me?

I'm thinking their might be some useful logging if I enable debug logs (but I can't find it)? Or maybe there is something I can get over the control protocol (but I couldn't find anything obvious in the stem API docs that exposes it)? Or maybe I could make a code change to log this information (I'm not sure where the code is that receives the announcements)?

Onion services will use your relay to store descriptors once it has the HSDir flag. You can't determine which onion services or how many onion services are using you without code changes.

Doing this is considered being a malicious relay and will get your relay removed from the Tor network.

If this question came up and was sent to tor-dev@ because you intend to perform research: it may be prudent to stop what you're doing and content the Research Safety Board.

https://research.torproject.org/safetyboard/

If you're just a curious relay operator that reached out to tor-dev@: everything is fine, thanks for running a relay, and don't start modifying Tor or logging traffic for "debugging purposes" as you might put yourself or Tor users in risk. Mail tor-relays@, or hop on #tor or #tor-relays on OFTC if something seems wrong. (Your relay looks fine, except consider setting your ContactInfo https://metrics.torproject.org/rs.html#details/ED279FC87D17921131CB629BA1D4E...)

Matt

On 7/29/19 11:09, clive.jenson@tutanota.com wrote:

    Onion services will use your relay to store descriptors once it
    has the
    HSDir flag.

https://metrics.torproject.org/rs.html#details/ED279FC87D17921131CB629BA1D4E6B0F8C00BF8)

Is the HSDir flag the same as V2Dir, or something different? You correctly identified my relay. I see it is a V2Dir but do not know how to determine if it is a HSDir.

HSDir is different than V2Dir. You'll get the HSDir flag and see it on Relay Search when you've earned it.

Ctrl-f in this document to learn more about possible flags and their requirements. https://gitweb.torproject.org/torspec.git/tree/dir-spec.txt

"HSDir" -- A router is a v2 hidden service directory if it stores and serves v2 hidden service descriptors, has the Stable and Fast flag, and the authority believes that it's been up for at least 96 hours (or the current value of MinUptimeHidServDirectoryV2).

    You can't determine which onion services or how many onion
    services are using you without code changes.

    Doing this is considered being a malicious relay and will get
    your relay
    removed from the Tor network.

If this question came up and was sent to tor-dev@ because you intend to
perform research: it may be prudent to stop what you're doing and
content the Research Safety Board.

https://research.torproject.org/safetyboard/

I'm just a curious user, this is not part of a formal research project.  Is there a public tor testnet that I could have joined my node to for this sort of experimentation (I don't have the resources to build my own)? I can understand why you don't want production nodes logging data that could potentially cause harm to other network users, but also do not think curious users should be discouraged from poking around in the code.

There's no public Tor testnet, but you can easily run your own on your own machine with Chutney[0] (easy, but less powerful) or Shadow[1] (harder, but very powerful). Chutney is more than enough for what it sounds like you want to do.

I did not mean to suggest curious users should not poke around code **safely**. Go for it. Learn a lot. And maybe even find a bug and contribute a fix? ;)

Hope that helps.

Matt

[0]: https://gitweb.torproject.org/chutney.git [1]: https://github.com/shadow/shadow