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- <title>Tor Server Configuration Instructions</title>
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- <h1>Configuring a <a href="http://tor.eff.org/">Tor</a> server</h1>
- <br />
- <p>
- The Tor network relies on volunteers to donate bandwidth. The more
- people who run servers, the faster the Tor network will be. If you have
- at least 20 kilobytes/s each way, please help out Tor by configuring your
- Tor to be a server too. We have many features that make Tor servers easy
- and convenient, including rate limiting for bandwidth, exit policies so
- you can limit your exposure to abuse complaints, and support for dynamic
- IP addresses.</p>
- <p>Having servers in many different places on the Internet is what
- makes Tor users secure. You may also get stronger anonymity yourself,
- since remote sites can't know whether connections originated at your
- computer or were relayed from others.</p>
- <p>Setting up a Tor server is easy and convenient:
- <ul>
- <li>Tor has built-in support for <a
- href="http://wiki.noreply.org/noreply/TheOnionRouter/TorFAQ#LimitBandwidth">rate
- limiting</a>. Further, if you have a fast link
- but want to limit the number of bytes per day
- (or week or month) that you donate, check out the <a
- href="http://wiki.noreply.org/noreply/TheOnionRouter/TorFAQ#Hibernation">hibernation
- feature</a>.
- </li>
- <li>Each Tor server has an <a
- href="http://wiki.noreply.org/noreply/TheOnionRouter/TorFAQ#RunAServerBut">exit
- policy</a> that specifies what sort of outbound connections are allowed
- or refused from that server. If you are uncomfortable allowing people
- to exit from your server, you can set it up to only allow connections
- to other Tor servers.
- </li>
- <li>It's fine if the server goes offline sometimes. The directories
- notice this quickly and stop advertising the server. Just try to make
- sure it's not too often, since connections using the server when it
- disconnects will break.
- </li>
- <li>We can handle servers with dynamic IPs just fine, as long as the
- server itself knows its IP. Have a look at this
- <a href="http://wiki.noreply.org/noreply/TheOnionRouter/TorFAQ#DynamicIP">
- entry in the FAQ</a>.
- </li>
- <li>If your server is behind a NAT and it doesn't know its public
- IP (e.g. it has an IP of 192.168.x.y), you'll need to set up port
- forwarding. Forwarding TCP connections is system dependent but <a
- href="http://wiki.noreply.org/noreply/TheOnionRouter/TorFAQ#ServerForFirewalledCli
- ents">this FAQ entry</a> offers some examples on how to do this.
- </li>
- <li>Your server will passively estimate and advertise its recent
- bandwidth capacity, so high-bandwidth servers will attract more users than
- low-bandwidth ones. Therefore having low-bandwidth servers is useful too.
- </li>
- </ul>
- <p>You can run a Tor server on
- pretty much any operating system, but see <a
- href="http://wiki.noreply.org/noreply/TheOnionRouter/TorFAQ#ServerOS">this
- FAQ entry</a> for advice about which ones work best and other problems
- you might encounter.</p>
- <hr />
- <a id="zero"></a>
- <h2><a class="anchor" href="#zero">Step Zero: Download and Install Tor</a></h2>
- <br />
- <p>Before you start, you need to make sure that Tor is up and running.
- </p>
- <p>For Windows users, this means at least <a
- href="http://tor.eff.org/doc/tor-doc-win32.html#installing">step one</a>
- of the Windows Tor installation howto. Mac OS X users need to do at least
- <a href="http://tor.eff.org/doc/tor-doc-osx.html#installing">step one</a>
- of OS X Tor installation howto. Linux/BSD/Unix users should do at least
- <a href="http://tor.eff.org/doc/tor-doc-unix.html#installing">step one</a>
- of the Unix Tor installation howto.
- </p>
- <p>If it's convenient, you might also want to use it as a client for a
- while to make sure it's actually working.</p>
- <hr />
- <a id="one"></a>
- <h2><a class="anchor" href="#one">Step One: Set it up as a server</a></h2>
- <br />
- <p>
- 1. Verify that your clock is set correctly. If possible, synchronize
- your clock with public time servers. Make sure name resolution works
- (that is, your computer can resolve addresses correctly).
- </p>
- <p>2. Edit the bottom part of your torrc. (See <a
- href="http://wiki.noreply.org/wiki/TheOnionRouter/TorFAQ#torrc">this
- FAQ entry</a> for help.)
- Make sure to define at least Nickname and ORPort. Create the DataDirectory
- if necessary, and make sure it's owned by the user that will be running
- tor. <em>If you want to run more than one server that's great, but
- please set <a href="http://wiki.noreply.org/noreply/TheOnionRouter/TorFAQ#MultipleServers">the
- MyFamily option</a> in all your servers' configuration files.</em>
- </p>
- <p>
- 3. If you are using a firewall, open a hole in your firewall so
- incoming connections can reach the ports you configured (ORPort, plus
- DirPort if you enabled it). Make sure you allow all outgoing connections,
- so your server can reach the other Tor servers.
- </p>
- <p>
- 4. Start your server: if you installed from source you can just
- run <tt>tor</tt>, whereas packages typically launch Tor from their
- initscripts or startup scripts. If it logs any warnings, address them. (By
- default Tor logs to stdout, but some packages log to <tt>/var/log/tor/</tt>
- instead. You can edit your torrc to configure log locations.)
- </p>
- <p>
- 5. Subscribe to the <a
- href="http://archives.seul.org/or/announce/">or-announce</a>
- mailing list. It is very low volume, and it will keep you informed
- of new stable releases. You might also consider subscribing to <a
- href="http://archives.seul.org/or/talk/">or-talk</a> (higher volume),
- where new development releases are announced.
- </p>
- <hr />
- <a id="two"></a>
- <h2><a class="anchor" href="#two">Step Two: Make sure it's working</a></h2>
- <br />
- <p>As soon as your server manages to connect to the network, it will
- try to determine whether the ports you configured are reachable from
- the outside. This may take up to 20 minutes. Look for a log entry like
- <tt>Self-testing indicates your ORPort is reachable from the outside. Excellent.</tt>
- If you don't see this message, it means that your server is not reachable
- from the outside -- you should re-check your firewalls, check that it's
- testing the IP and port you think it should be testing, etc.
- </p>
- <p>When it decides that it's reachable, it will upload a "server
- descriptor" to the directories. This will let clients know
- what address, ports, keys, etc your server is using. You can <a
- href="http://belegost.seul.org/">load the directory manually</a> and
- look through it to find the nickname you configured, to make sure it's
- there. You may need to wait a few seconds to give enough time for it to
- make a fresh directory.</p>
- <hr />
- <a id="three"></a>
- <h2><a class="anchor" href="#three">Step Three: Register your nickname</a></h2>
- <br />
- <p>
- Once you are convinced it's working (after a day or two maybe), you should
- register your server.
- This reserves your nickname so nobody else can take it, and lets us
- contact you if you need to upgrade or something goes wrong.
- </p>
- <p>
- Send mail to <a
- href="mailto:tor-ops@freehaven.net">tor-ops@freehaven.net</a> with a
- subject of '[New Server] <your server's nickname>' and
- include the following information in the message:
- </p>
- <ul>
- <li>Your server's nickname</li>
- <li>The fingerprint for your server's key (the contents of the
- "fingerprint" file in your DataDirectory -- on Windows, look in
- \<i>username</i>\Application Data\tor\ or \Application Data\tor\;
- on OS X, look in /Library/Tor/var/lib/tor/; and on Linux/BSD/Unix,
- look in /var/lib/tor or ~/.tor)
- </li>
- <li>Who you are, so we know whom to contact if a problem arises</li>
- <li>What kind of connectivity the new server will have</li>
- </ul>
- <hr />
- <a id="four"></a>
- <h2><a class="anchor" href="#four">Step Four: Once it's working</a></h2>
- <br />
- <p>
- We recommend the following steps as well:
- </p>
- <p>
- 6. Decide what exit policy you want. By default your server allows
- access to many popular services, but we restrict some (such as port 25)
- due to abuse potential. You might want an exit policy that is
- less restrictive or more restrictive; edit your torrc appropriately.
- Read the FAQ entry on <a
- href="http://tor.eff.org/faq-abuse.html#TypicalAbuses">issues you might
- encounter if you use the default exit policy</a>.
- If you choose a particularly open exit policy, you should make
- sure your ISP is ok with that choice.
- </p>
- <p>
- 7. Decide about rate limiting. Cable modem, DSL, and other users
- who have asymmetric bandwidth (e.g. more down than up) should
- rate limit to their slower bandwidth, to avoid congestion. See the <a
- href="http://wiki.noreply.org/noreply/TheOnionRouter/TorFAQ#LimitBandwidth">rate
- limiting FAQ entry</a> for details.
- </p>
- <p>
- 8. If you control the name servers for your domain, consider setting
- your hostname to 'anonymous' or 'proxy' or 'tor-proxy', so when other
- people see the address in their web logs, they will more quickly
- understand what's going on.
- </p>
- <p>
- 9. If your computer isn't running a webserver, please consider
- changing your ORPort to 443 and your DirPort to 80. Many Tor
- users are stuck behind firewalls that only let them browse the
- web, and this change will let them reach your Tor server. Win32
- servers can simply change their ORPort and DirPort directly
- in their torrc and restart Tor. OS X or Unix servers can't bind
- directly to these ports (since they don't run as root), so they will
- need to set up some sort of <a
- href="http://wiki.noreply.org/wiki/TheOnionRouter/TorFAQ#ServerForFirewalledClients">
- port forwarding</a> so connections can reach their Tor server. If you are
- using ports 80 and 443 already but still want to help out, other useful
- ports are 22, 110, and 143.
- </p>
- <p>
- 10. (Unix only). Make a separate user to run the server. If you
- installed the OS X package or the deb or the rpm, this is already
- done. Otherwise, you can do it by hand. (The Tor server doesn't need to
- be run as root, so it's good practice to not run it as root. Running
- as a 'tor' user avoids issues with identd and other services that
- detect user name. If you're the paranoid sort, feel free to <a
- href="http://wiki.noreply.org/wiki/TheOnionRouter/TorInChroot">put Tor
- into a chroot jail</a>.)
- </p>
- <p>
- 11. (Unix only.) Your operating system probably limits the number
- of open file descriptors per process to 1024 (or even less). If you
- plan to be running a fast exit node, this is probably not enough. On
- Linux, you should add a line like "toruser hard nofile 8192" to your
- /etc/security/limits.conf file (where toruser is the user that runs the
- Tor process), and then restart Tor if it's installed as a package (or log
- out and log back in if you run it yourself). If that doesn't work, see <a
- href="http://wiki.noreply.org/noreply/TheOnionRouter/TorFAQ#FileDescriptors">this
- FAQ entry</a> for other suggested ways to run "ulimit -n 8192" before
- you launch Tor.
- </p>
- <p>
- 12. If you installed Tor via some package or installer, it probably starts
- Tor for you automatically on boot. But if you installed from source,
- you may find the initscripts in contrib/tor.sh or contrib/torctl useful.
- </p>
- When you change your Tor configuration, be sure to restart Tor, and
- remember to verify that your server still works correctly after the
- change.
- <hr />
- <p>If you have suggestions for improving this document, please post
- them on <a href="http://bugs.noreply.org/tor">our bugtracker</a> in the
- website category. Thanks!</p>
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