Hello everyone.
Long story short I have just begun experimenting with running multiple Tor
instances on a couple of my servers, namely to see if it actually makes an
appreciable difference to my overall throughput.
I have multiple public IPs on my servers, and I would like each Tor
instance to use its own dedicated address so I have configured the
appropriate ip:port addresses in my second torrc file.
When I start up the second instance, everything gets bound to the correct
ip:port combinations (as specified in my torrc file), and I have no
problems getting Tor to bootstrap and successfully open a circuit.
The problem appears when Tor tries to verify that my ORPort/DirPort are
reachable, because for some reason it's trying to check the wrong IP
address?
EG - Here are the relevant ports from my torrc file:
SocksPort 9053
ControlPort 9063
Log notice file /var/log/tor/notices3.log
RunAsDaemon 1
DataDirectory /var/lib/tor/3
ORPort 50.7.178.99:445
DirPort 50.7.178.99:83
When I start Tor, everything matches the above:
Jan 08 11:56:23.178 [notice] Opening Socks listener on 127.0.0.1:9053
Jan 08 11:56:23.179 [notice] Opening Control listener on 127.0.0.1:9063
Jan 08 11:56:23.179 [notice] Opening OR listener on 50.7.178.99:445
Jan 08 11:56:23.179 [notice] Opening Directory listener on 50.7.178.99:83
Tor successfully bootstraps and establishes a circuit:
Jan 08 11:57:13.000 [notice] Bootstrapped 90%: Establishing a Tor circuit
Jan 08 11:57:13.000 [notice] Tor has successfully opened a circuit. Looks
like client functionality is working.
Jan 08 11:57:13.000 [notice] Bootstrapped 100%: Done
BUT THEN ...
Jan 08 11:57:13.000 [notice] Now checking whether ORPort 50.7.178.102:444 and
DirPort 50.7.178.102:83 are reachable... (this may take up to 20 minutes --
look for log messages indicating success)
Notice that it's still checking the correct port from the torrc file, but
not the correct ip address. I've tried different IP:port combinations, and
each time it's the same result. Right port, wrong IP.
I've tried now on two different servers, and had exactly the same results
each time.
Machines are running Debian 8.0 with Tor 0.2.7.6. I have tried installing
from the Debian repo, as well as building from the latest source. No
difference.
What's causing this to go wrong?
Is there something incredibly simple which I'm simply just not doing
properly, or is there possibly more going on here than first meets the eye?