tor-relays December 2014

tor-relays@lists.torproject.org

65 participants
41 discussions

Hibernation and Guard flag
by Filippo Valsorda 21 Dec '14

21 Dec '14

Hello, I set up a relay node on my VPS to eat up all that unused bandwidth, and it's doing well so far [1]. Since I have ~3TB per month and I heard hibernation is preferable to throttling, I set up monthly accounting with that cap. However I have two doubts: 1. Is daily accounting preferable? That is, what's best, shorter or longer hibernation periods? 2. How does hibernation play with the Guard flag? I know Guards rotation plays a crucial role in users privacy, and it seems to me hibernation would really hurt a client that selected you as its Guard, since it will have either to run with one less available Guard, or pick a new one and increase its risk. Also, I know there are talks about making only 1 Guard selected, how would that play with hibernation? N.B. please cc me into the replies, I might not be getting only-in-list replies. Thanks, Filippo [1] https://globe.torproject.org/#/relay/2EC042F4274CC8A54381C78E8D1BF322FA26A0…

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Re: [tor-relays] Platform diversity in Tor network [was: OpenBSD doc/TUNING]
by teor 16 Dec '14

16 Dec '14

> From: Richard Johnson <rdump(a)river.com> > To: tor-relays(a)lists.torproject.org > Subject: Re: [tor-relays] Platform diversity in Tor network [was: > OpenBSD doc/TUNING] > > On 2014-11-05 10:47, Libertas wrote: >> I appreciate your interest! Also, I hope I'm not speaking with too >> much authority. If anyone here has more OpenBSD experience than me, >> please send addendums or corrections. > > Maybe call this an addendum? Some version of the following work in progress > is going onto our local documentation store for others maintaining our > OpenBSD relays. > > It's a bit long-winded for inclusion in doc/TUNING per > https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/13702 , as it's intended to > educate *BSD and Linux sysadmins about a smidgen of the why behind the > tuning recommendations, as well as point at further exploration. > > > Richard > > ------- > Our OpenBSD tuning for Tor involves: ... > 4) Probably running more than one relay on a host to use available CPU > cores and bandwidth. ... > 4) Loading more CPU cores > > If you have one of your CPUs maxed out running a Tor relay, with the other > CPU(s) mostly idle (see top(1)), yet you have bandwidth to spare still, you > can run additional Tor instances to sop some of it up. > > The sanest way to handle this is to make each relay a stand-alone entity > with a naming scheme to keep them straight. Here, we'll use "tor#" for every > relay past the first. > > Make per-relay directories in /var owned by _tor:_tor mode 700 > drwx------ 5 _tor _tor 512 Jan 13 18:52 /var/tor/ > drwx------ 5 _tor _tor 512 Jan 13 22:39 /var/tor2/ > drwx------ 5 _tor _tor 512 Jan 13 22:39 /var/tor3/ > ... > Copy the tor startup script /etc/rc.d/tor to match the naming scheme. > /etc/rc.d/tor2 > /etc/rc.d/tor3 > ... > Copy the torrc from /etc/tor/torrc. > /etc/tor/torrc2 > /etc/tor/torrc3 > ... > Modify /etc/tor/torrc2, /etc/tor/torrc3, ... so they refer to their > appropriate private DataDirectory and PidFile, listen on the appropriate > ports and IP addresses, and have the appropriate exit policies. (Remember > that the public Tor network will by design ignore more than two relays per > IP address.) > DataDirectory /var/tor2 > PidFile /var/tor2/pid > ControlPort 9222 > Address 10.2.2.2 > ORPort 8222 > DirPort 7222 > ... > DataDirectory /var/tor3 > PidFile /var/tor3/pid > ControlPort 9333 > Address 10.3.3.3 > ORPort 8333 > DirPort 7222 > ... > Set each relay to launch at system startup via the named /etc/rc.d scripts in > /etc/rc.conf.local's pkg_scripts. > tor_flags="${tor_flags} -f /etc/tor/torrc" > tor2_flags="${tor2_flags} -f /etc/tor/torrc2" > tor3_flags="${tor3_flags} -f /etc/tor/torrc3" > ... > pkg_scripts=" ... tor tor2 tor3 ..." > Set openfiles-max for each named pkg_script from /etc/rc.conf.log in > /etc/login.conf. > tor:\ > :openfiles-max=8192:\ > :tc=daemon: > tor2:\ > :openfiles-max=8192:\ > :tc=daemon: > tor3:\ > :openfiles-max=8192:\ > :tc=daemon: > ... > Remember to allow inbound traffic to the additional ports set in > /etc/tor/torrc[#] in your /etc/pf.conf. Why give advice on "tor3" when the current consensus parameter for limit per IP is 2? In case someone has an extra IP? Or are you hoping we will increase the consensus parameter to 3? I could revive that suggestion, by the way - it stalled as trac #13414 due to concerns with making sybils easier. https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/13414 Maybe we could try for 3 per IP? teor pgp 0xABFED1AC hkp://pgp.mit.edu/ https://gist.github.com/teor2345/d033b8ce0a99adbc89c5 http://0bin.net/paste/Mu92kPyphK0bqmbA#Zvt3gzMrSCAwDN6GKsUk7Q8G-eG+Y+BLpe7w…

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Platform diversity in Tor network [was: OpenBSD doc/TUNING]
by grarpamp 16 Dec '14

16 Dec '14

On Tue, Nov 4, 2014 at 12:25 PM, Libertas <libertas(a)mykolab.com> wrote: > I think it would be a good idea to add OpenBSD to doc/TUNING because [...] > promoting OpenBSD relays benefits the Tor network's security. Absolutely. Not just due to OpenBSD's security positioning, but moreso from network diversity. Windows is its own world. But if you're a Unix admin there's no reason Linux should be deployed 20x more often than [Free/Open]BSD. It's ridiculously counter to meeting diversity goals, especially with bandwith weighting if one platform is getting grossly disproportionate traffic than another. Just pick one of the two BSD's and run it instead. FreeBSD in particular is well suited to the OS and network needs of Tor. And knowing how to admin more Unixes will serve any admin well. 5950 Linux 1593 Windows 173 FreeBSD 55 Darwin 44 OpenBSD 7 NetBSD 6 SunOS 4 Bitrig 2 GNU/kFreeBSD 1 DragonFly

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Out of memory message
by Logforme 15 Dec '14

15 Dec '14

I run the relay Logforme (855BC2DABE24C861CD887DB9B2E950424B49FC3). Yesterday I saw new messages in the log file: Dec 06 09:28:13.000 [notice] We're low on memory. Killing circuits with over-long queues. (This behavior is controlled by MaxMemInQueues.) Dec 06 09:28:16.000 [notice] Removed 1040388096 bytes by killing 1 circuits; 14631 circuits remain alive. Do I read that correctly as one circuit using 1GB of memory? Here's the first lines from the top command: top - 09:40:41 up 31 days, 1:51, 1 user, load average: 0.53, 0.62, 0.66 Tasks: 95 total, 3 running, 92 sleeping, 0 stopped, 0 zombie %Cpu(s): 10.2 us, 2.0 sy, 0.0 ni, 83.2 id, 0.0 wa, 0.0 hi, 4.5 si, 0.0 st KiB Mem: 3950828 total, 3833092 used, 117736 free, 49696 buffers KiB Swap: 3212284 total, 1296392 used, 1915892 free, 99168 cached PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND 2680 debian-t 20 0 4134m 2.8g 24m R 63.5 73.4 27199:00 tor The relay is running on a dedicated debian box with 4GB of ram. It usually only uses about 0.5GB but now it is maxed out. The relay and the box is so far working fine, I just wonder if this is some kind of attack or if anything is wrong and if there is anything I should do about it.

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Changing ulimit for debian-tor
by Lluís 12 Dec '14

12 Dec '14

The limit to open files is set to 1024 by default in my system. So it is for the "debian-tor" user, too. It seems to me a bit low. I tried to rise it a whit through "sudo" and getting a shell for debian-tor, but it doesn't work. Can I use PAM-LIMIT with tor ? If not, how can I set ulimit for debian-tor when booting ? And when restarting tor ? BTW, may the open files ulimit preclude a relay to get the "guard" flag ? thanks in advance, Lluís Spain

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specifying your own entrance and exit nodes
by Seth 11 Dec '14

11 Dec '14

Assuming there are certain Tor notes being run by parties hostile to my own interests, what are the pros and cons of specifying one's own list of trusted entrance and exit nodes? I run a Tor relay at home 24/7 and use that as my entrance point. I do this to provide cover traffic for my own Tor use as well as help out the network. I also try to use Tor for all my daily web browsing when possible. This has given be a lot of headaches. Besides the demoralizing barrage of Cloudfare captchas, I've had a lot of problems with dropped connections, timeouts, SSL cert warnings, fatal errors connecting to HTTPS sites. I started to get a gut feeling, warranted or not, that some exits nodes might be meddling with my traffic. To combat this I changed the configuration on my local Tor relay to use only exit nodes run by organizations or people that I felt I could trust. I didn't bother with specifying entrance nodes because I could not see what the gain would be. This seems to have curbed some of the problems, with the tradeoff that responsiveness is much more inconsistent. I'm just curious if restricting exit nodes to a few dozen that you trust effectively defeats most of the purpose of using Tor. What would be the bare minimum of Tor exit nodes a person would need to use in order to make life difficult for the Panopticon surveillor scum? If this post is more appropriate for Tor-talk, please let me know

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Re: [tor-relays] No obfs3 traffic at all on bridge
by TheGreatWent 09 Dec '14

09 Dec '14

From: Marco Gruß<tor-relays(a)email.todmue.de> > Hello, > > my obfs3 bridge has now been up for > 20 days. > > I have iptables rules in place to count packets. To date, > I have not seen a single packet to either the obfs3 or > the scramblesuit port. Both are working though, I just > tried them with the Tor Browser. > > Is this a good sign (i.e. the bridge is still in reserve) > or a bad sign (something's wrong)? > I set one up around the same time and haven't seen any traffic either. Maybe there is a surplus of them? I couldn't figure out what the different bridge pools were or how they got allocated to them.

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exit policy to reflect country-wide ban
by Vladimir Ivanov 08 Dec '14

08 Dec '14

hi. Recently, github was blocked in Russia (see discussion here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8692584). The ban is executed by all major ISPs (comply with this regulation is necessary to keep the telecom license so no ISP is risking to disobey), this means that if your exit node happens to be in Russia, you're out of luck when you try to connect to github. Some suggest marking exit nodes in Russia as bad exits because connecting via them leads to various problems (like node provider doing MitM on all github https connections). Here is an example: https://twitter.com/wiretapped/status/539934125293961216 I think, if Russian exits operators implement reduced policy rejecting github, that would be better solution: they're still usefull for all other sites and a client would access github using a tor exit elsewhere. Do I miss something here? Are any disatvantages of this? More general, if a network, a particular exit node is connected to, blocks some IP addresses, is it wise to reflect those changes in the node's ExitPolicy? BR, Vladimir

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No obfs3 traffic at all on bridge
by Marco Gruß 07 Dec '14

07 Dec '14

Hello, my obfs3 bridge has now been up for > 20 days. I have iptables rules in place to count packets. To date, I have not seen a single packet to either the obfs3 or the scramblesuit port. Both are working though, I just tried them with the Tor Browser. Is this a good sign (i.e. the bridge is still in reserve) or a bad sign (something's wrong)? Thanks for any help! Marco

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According to globe and atlas, bridges have guard flags, while they actually don't have them at all...
by Justaguy 07 Dec '14

07 Dec '14

What is the cause for this behavior? https://globe.thecthulhu.com/#/bridge/286FD249840142D1C7536C2D12FDBE5EA63AD… https://atlas.thecthulhu.com/#details/286FD249840142D1C7536C2D12FDBE5EA63AD… -- Contact: Irc, justaguy @ Freenode or OFTC OTR fingerprint: FF6D1AC2 13F38B15 EDB21522 D3530A6F 6EE01996

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tor-relays December 2014