Thanks for your answer Damian. That explains the circuits' existence somewhat, though I usually also see new circuits get created after the original ones are closed. For example, in my screenshot below, there are two circuits, but they were soon closed and about 10 minutes later, three new ones opened up.

Here is an arm screenshot of where I'm seeing these purpose values:
http://laserscorpion.com/images/temp/circuits.png

I obscured my own IP since I'm running a bridge, and went ahead and obscured everyone else I was connected to as well. In this case, I've got two circuits constructed, with the unusual purposes shown. Any idea what it means in this context?

On Sat, Jun 28, 2014 at 11:32 AM, Damian Johnson <atagar@torproject.org> wrote:

Hi Joel. Where are you getting "Purpose:
Ags=is_internal,need_capacity," from? Those values are build flags
rather than purposes...

https://stem.torproject.org/api/control.html#stem.CircBuildFlag

Stem should presently document all the values tor can give - all that
notice is just letting you know tor reserves the right to add new
ones.

As for having circuits, tor constructs circuits on occasion for
several purposes such as fetching descriptor data. When you first
start tor it constructs some circuits optimistically in case you use
it as a client, but those circuits eventually die off if unused. I'm
not sure if setting SocksPort to zero prevents optimistic circuit
construction (though seems it should since they're then unusable).

Cheers! -Damian

On Fri, Jun 27, 2014 at 9:50 PM, Joel Cretan <jcretan@gmail.com> wrote:
> I'm running a relay that I do not intend to use for anything else, so I set
> SocksPort to 0. I usually have two or three circuits established anyway,
> though, so I guess I haven't managed to disable creating those. I'm not sure
> what they are for. They are always labeled "Purpose:
> Ags=is_internal,need_capacity,". Several of them seem to get created around
> the same time, stay open for a while, and then get closed around the same
> time.
>
> I see some other circuit purposes documented here:
> https://stem.torproject.org/api/control.html
> But that documentation indicates that "Tor may provide purposes not in this
> enum", which is the case here. What are these circuits for, and do I need
> them?
>
> Here's my torrc: http://pastebin.com/fuQv8B2m
> Here's my ifconfig output: http://pastebin.com/mxMkhbMj
> I'm running tor 0.2.4.22 compiled from source (did not specify any options
> on make) on raspbian wheezy June 2014 with kernel version 3.12.20+.
>
> Thanks,
> Joel
>
>
>

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