I have a Banana Pi that I would like to use to help the TOR network. I have installed Debian-Jessie and started researching the process for setting up relay, even an exit. I am a total noob, but willing to learn. If someone is willing to help me step by step, I would be excited to help. I've tested my internet speed, Download average 60 mbps, Upload avreage 6 mbps, If I would be more of a hindrance than a benefit, please say so, no hard feelings. Located Central CA.
General G.
Sent from [ProtonMail](https://protonmail.com), encrypted email based in Switzerland.
Hey Genral G,
as far as I see, you plan to use your home connection for your contribution. First of all: thanks for volunteering! [Although I'm not Mr Competence nor Mr InnerCircleofTrust.]
You should not at all run an exit if you can't, i.e. having a dedicated IP with lots of traffic and a provider being fine with Tor exits (which is absolutely not easy to find). Under no circumstances run an exit on your home connection (and not with a PI). Why? An exit always seems to be the origin of all activity running over it. So, every abuse complaint concerns the exit in question. Your favourite law enforcement authority will visit you kindly (based on different values). Another point is that IPs from exits are often blocked by webmasters, so even if you don't use Tor for yourself, you won't be able to access certain sites from your home connection any more. An exit must be a dedicated server with enough power in terms of traffic. I only have legacy PIs, but I can't imagine a recent PI would do the job - at least on my PIs, literally everything including the network is USB-bottlenecked, it won't even stream blue ray quality. Exits are not so widespread which means they see literally all the traffic going through the network.
So, you have to decide whether you run a relay or a bridge. A bridge helps people in censored and/or oppressive areas because a bridge's IP is not publicly available and therefore is not so likely associated with the Tor network. Furthermore, you can setup pluggable transports that obfuscate traffic so a censor can't easily tell a user connects to the tor network. All of this is favourable for users in legislations where the sheer use of Tor is sufficient for prosecution, be based on laws or by pure arbitrary will. A bridge sees users, but not the huge gigs of traffic, so it suggest it to be the choice for a PI on a home connection. It's not likely ordinary criminals from our own homes use bridges - for them, it's legal to use relays that provide the same amount of anonymity and, furthermore, are easier (automatically) to connect to.
I run a bridge and it's the time of political change that drives my users based on statistics. A bridges IP is assigned to one of three pools and potential users can request up to three bridge IPs at a time. This makes the overall amount of bridges unknown and prevents blocking all of them.
A relay provides the same amount of anonymity, but is aimed at users in legislations letting them legally want to seek anonymity. The IPs are publicly available and therefore the avarage western user usually connects automatically, i.e. to a relay. Relays see more traffic than bridges and a reason might be the often found better infrastructure in democratic countries including the according offers like high bandwidth streaming. On a home connection, abuse complaints and prosecutors won't come for you running a middle relay. But, as IPs are public, some webmasters even block all Tor IPs although this affects only the relays' operators as no Tor traffic exits a middle relay. This means that you might be restricted from services even if you don't use Tor for yourself which could make your home connection partially useless for your purposes.
Also, I'm "not quite sure" a PI could stand the traffic and I have no experience in setting up a stable relay on a PI without unresponsiveness errors appering in the logs. Search this mailing list for answers, the problem seems to be common.
The next question would be if you want to use Tor for yourself. I strongly suggest parallel use of Tor Browser Bundle for your own purposes as your PI probably isn't your everyday dektop.
If run on a unixoid desktop, you would have the possibility to set up a virtual address space and iptables rules to route the whole traffic of a given user including DNS queries through Tor although there's a caveat in kernel package filter resulting in leaks under certain circumstances. Tor wiki addresses this topic.
The third possibility would be to route your whole network including smart tv und DVD players through tor. Apart from increased network latency and a PI being slow, you're not anonymous if you send any personal identifiable information over the network. In this scenario, this would affect your whole network.
My personal opinion is to forget about the concept of plug and forget and not to be surprised about the concept of ingnorance and surprise.
I would suggest you rely on the wiki. First, it's very good and second, you can't yet judge information provided by people like me doing here.
I can't give you a quick introduction to linux administration. I don't know if "noob" relates to Tor or to Linux in general. As for Tor, you find an easy setup for a bridge or relay in the wiki, and for heavens sake, the most important option is "Exitpolicy reject *:*" in order to prevent obstacles you don't want to face at the beginning. Everything else just causes malfunction at worst.
So, the powepoint abyss ends here and the interesting stuff begins. Note: you should be familiar with opening ports in your router/firewall and forwarding them to your PI. First, do this: https://www.torproject.org/docs/debian.html.en#ubuntu
Now this if you want a relay (not a bridge): https://www.torproject.org/docs/tor-doc-relay.html.en Notice: on linux, your config is in /etc, so look there for your torrc or a tor subfolder.
On the command line, "ls" lists a directory, "ls -al" shows even the hidden files and sizes and ownership. "cd" changes directory. "cd /etc" would jump to /etc. "cd .." would jump to parent directory. Notice the blank space after cd.
Keep this in mind: https://www.torproject.org/docs/tor-relay-debian.html.en#after If you want overall automatic updates, I could deliver that later on, it would make this mail even longer.
If you want a bridge: https://www.torproject.org/projects/obfsproxy-instructions.html.en#instructi...
I suggest also offering scramblesuit as not all puggable obfuscation always works for every user. This would affect the following line: ServerTransportPlugin obfs3,scramblesuit exec /usr/local/bin/obfsproxy managed I use Ubuntu and for us privileged, the toproject repository already offers pluggable transport via normal install and then, scramblesuit is already available. I'm not sure about debian, torproject debian repos lack that python pluggable transport library.
And of course, that would need another port forwarded in your firewall. The procedure is the same as in obsproxy instructions link.
As I don't know about your noobiness, I suggest you install nano first, a command line text editor suitable for beginners. Believe me, vi is hell, but not in Sartre's terms, there are no others, just hell and you stuck in it.
sudo apt-get install nano
After that, you can type "sudo nano /etc/torrc" (always without quotation marks) to edit your tor config. If it's not there, serach for a torrc. Do "sudo updatedb" and wait. then type "locate torrc" and remember the path.
In order not to have to sudo every time to gain administrative privileges, type "su" or "sudo -i".
I hope this helps a bit. Have fun with Tor and hopefully linux.
Greetings
christian
Am 30.03.2016 um 03:53 schrieb Generalgrievous:
I have a Banana Pi that I would like to use to help the TOR network. I have installed Debian-Jessie and started researching the process for setting up relay, even an exit. I am a total noob, but willing to learn. If someone is willing to help me step by step, I would be excited to help. I've tested my internet speed, Download average 60 mbps, Upload avreage 6 mbps, If I would be more of a hindrance than a benefit, please say so, no hard feelings. Located Central CA.
General G.Sent from ProtonMail https://protonmail.com, encrypted email based in Switzerland.
tor-relays mailing list tor-relays@lists.torproject.org https://lists.torproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tor-relays
A Pi 2 or better could saturate your average <100Mbit/s each way home connection running as a middle node. However, the Pi won't have any more processing power to spare for anything else, at least that's how it was with my Pi 2.
On 30.3.16 1:22, brightsidedarkside wrote:
Hey Genral G,
as far as I see, you plan to use your home connection for your contribution. First of all: thanks for volunteering! [Although I'm not Mr Competence nor Mr InnerCircleofTrust.]
You should not at all run an exit if you can't, i.e. having a dedicated IP with lots of traffic and a provider being fine with Tor exits (which is absolutely not easy to find). Under no circumstances run an exit on your home connection (and not with a PI). Why? An exit always seems to be the origin of all activity running over it. So, every abuse complaint concerns the exit in question. Your favourite law enforcement authority will visit you kindly (based on different values). Another point is that IPs from exits are often blocked by webmasters, so even if you don't use Tor for yourself, you won't be able to access certain sites from your home connection any more. An exit must be a dedicated server with enough power in terms of traffic. I only have legacy PIs, but I can't imagine a recent PI would do the job - at least on my PIs, literally everything including the network is USB-bottlenecked, it won't even stream blue ray quality. Exits are not so widespread which means they see literally all the traffic going through the network.
So, you have to decide whether you run a relay or a bridge. A bridge helps people in censored and/or oppressive areas because a bridge's IP is not publicly available and therefore is not so likely associated with the Tor network. Furthermore, you can setup pluggable transports that obfuscate traffic so a censor can't easily tell a user connects to the tor network. All of this is favourable for users in legislations where the sheer use of Tor is sufficient for prosecution, be based on laws or by pure arbitrary will. A bridge sees users, but not the huge gigs of traffic, so it suggest it to be the choice for a PI on a home connection. It's not likely ordinary criminals from our own homes use bridges - for them, it's legal to use relays that provide the same amount of anonymity and, furthermore, are easier (automatically) to connect to.
I run a bridge and it's the time of political change that drives my users based on statistics. A bridges IP is assigned to one of three pools and potential users can request up to three bridge IPs at a time. This makes the overall amount of bridges unknown and prevents blocking all of them.
A relay provides the same amount of anonymity, but is aimed at users in legislations letting them legally want to seek anonymity. The IPs are publicly available and therefore the avarage western user usually connects automatically, i.e. to a relay. Relays see more traffic than bridges and a reason might be the often found better infrastructure in democratic countries including the according offers like high bandwidth streaming. On a home connection, abuse complaints and prosecutors won't come for you running a middle relay. But, as IPs are public, some webmasters even block all Tor IPs although this affects only the relays' operators as no Tor traffic exits a middle relay. This means that you might be restricted from services even if you don't use Tor for yourself which could make your home connection partially useless for your purposes.
Also, I'm "not quite sure" a PI could stand the traffic and I have no experience in setting up a stable relay on a PI without unresponsiveness errors appering in the logs. Search this mailing list for answers, the problem seems to be common.
The next question would be if you want to use Tor for yourself. I strongly suggest parallel use of Tor Browser Bundle for your own purposes as your PI probably isn't your everyday dektop.
If run on a unixoid desktop, you would have the possibility to set up a virtual address space and iptables rules to route the whole traffic of a given user including DNS queries through Tor although there's a caveat in kernel package filter resulting in leaks under certain circumstances. Tor wiki addresses this topic.
The third possibility would be to route your whole network including smart tv und DVD players through tor. Apart from increased network latency and a PI being slow, you're not anonymous if you send any personal identifiable information over the network. In this scenario, this would affect your whole network.
My personal opinion is to forget about the concept of plug and forget and not to be surprised about the concept of ingnorance and surprise.
I would suggest you rely on the wiki. First, it's very good and second, you can't yet judge information provided by people like me doing here.
I can't give you a quick introduction to linux administration. I don't know if "noob" relates to Tor or to Linux in general. As for Tor, you find an easy setup for a bridge or relay in the wiki, and for heavens sake, the most important option is "Exitpolicy reject *:*" in order to prevent obstacles you don't want to face at the beginning. Everything else just causes malfunction at worst.
So, the powepoint abyss ends here and the interesting stuff begins. Note: you should be familiar with opening ports in your router/firewall and forwarding them to your PI. First, do this: https://www.torproject.org/docs/debian.html.en#ubuntu
Now this if you want a relay (not a bridge): https://www.torproject.org/docs/tor-doc-relay.html.en Notice: on linux, your config is in /etc, so look there for your torrc or a tor subfolder.
On the command line, "ls" lists a directory, "ls -al" shows even the hidden files and sizes and ownership. "cd" changes directory. "cd /etc" would jump to /etc. "cd .." would jump to parent directory. Notice the blank space after cd.
Keep this in mind: https://www.torproject.org/docs/tor-relay-debian.html.en#after If you want overall automatic updates, I could deliver that later on, it would make this mail even longer.
If you want a bridge: https://www.torproject.org/projects/obfsproxy-instructions.html.en#instructi...
I suggest also offering scramblesuit as not all puggable obfuscation always works for every user. This would affect the following line: ServerTransportPlugin obfs3,scramblesuit exec /usr/local/bin/obfsproxy managed I use Ubuntu and for us privileged, the toproject repository already offers pluggable transport via normal install and then, scramblesuit is already available. I'm not sure about debian, torproject debian repos lack that python pluggable transport library.
And of course, that would need another port forwarded in your firewall. The procedure is the same as in obsproxy instructions link.
As I don't know about your noobiness, I suggest you install nano first, a command line text editor suitable for beginners. Believe me, vi is hell, but not in Sartre's terms, there are no others, just hell and you stuck in it.
sudo apt-get install nano
After that, you can type "sudo nano /etc/torrc" (always without quotation marks) to edit your tor config. If it's not there, serach for a torrc. Do "sudo updatedb" and wait. then type "locate torrc" and remember the path.
In order not to have to sudo every time to gain administrative privileges, type "su" or "sudo -i".
I hope this helps a bit. Have fun with Tor and hopefully linux.
Greetings
christian
Am 30.03.2016 um 03:53 schrieb Generalgrievous:
I have a Banana Pi that I would like to use to help the TOR network. I have installed Debian-Jessie and started researching the process for setting up relay, even an exit. I am a total noob, but willing to learn. If someone is willing to help me step by step, I would be excited to help. I've tested my internet speed, Download average 60 mbps, Upload avreage 6 mbps, If I would be more of a hindrance than a benefit, please say so, no hard feelings. Located Central CA.
General G.Sent from ProtonMail https://protonmail.com, encrypted email based in Switzerland.
tor-relays mailing list tor-relays@lists.torproject.org https://lists.torproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tor-relays
tor-relays mailing list tor-relays@lists.torproject.org https://lists.torproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tor-relays
On Wed, 30 Mar 2016 07:22:45 +0200 brightsidedarkside brightsidedarkside@t-online.de allegedly wrote:
Hey Genral G,
An impressively helpful, generous, complete and patient response to a plea for help.
Exactly the sort of response which shows how good the community can be abd which puts to shame the sort of unhelpful, snarky, smart ass responses we sometimes see on this list and elsewhere.
Congratulations and thanks Christian.
Mick
--------------------------------------------------------------------- Mick Morgan gpg fingerprint: FC23 3338 F664 5E66 876B 72C0 0A1F E60B 5BAD D312 http://baldric.net
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Many residential and business ISP's are the same dsl/coax/fiber company. Many of them will provide extra IP's for some tiny fee, so primary clearnet use can remain unaffected. Or you can route tor over vpn. Some do run exits at home. In that case consider contact local LEAs enquiring if they exonorator / informing them your project. Find your cyber / crime defense attorney to inform. And at least consider posting tor-exit-notice on your doors and clearly segregating your project / personal spaces and activities, encrypt / index what datasets you have, offsite backups. Exit issues have become very rare as LEAs have become educated over the years. Preparation is still better. After that, being a punk is half the fun and point.
Christian, Thank you so much for your patience with me. I think my enthusiasm for Tor has gotten the best of me, but I am going to press on and do some more research. The info you gave will help immensely and I thank you again,
General G.
Sent from [ProtonMail](https://protonmail.com), encrypted email based in Switzerland.
-------- Original Message -------- Subject: [tor-relays] I would like to help. Local Time: March 29, 2016 6:53 PM UTC Time: March 30, 2016 1:53 AM From: generalgrievous@protonmail.ch To: tor-relays@lists.torproject.org
I have a Banana Pi that I would like to use to help the TOR network. I have installed Debian-Jessie and started researching the process for setting up relay, even an exit. I am a total noob, but willing to learn. If someone is willing to help me step by step, I would be excited to help. I've tested my internet speed, Download average 60 mbps, Upload avreage 6 mbps, If I would be more of a hindrance than a benefit, please say so, no hard feelings. Located Central CA.
General G.
Sent from [ProtonMail](https://protonmail.com), encrypted email based in Switzerland.
tor-relays@lists.torproject.org
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12xBTM -
brightsidedarkside -
Generalgrievous -
grarpamp -
I -
mick