tor-doc-server.html 10 KB

123456789101112131415161718192021222324252627282930313233343536373839404142434445464748495051525354555657585960616263646566676869707172737475767778798081828384858687888990919293949596979899100101102103104105106107108109110111112113114115116117118119120121122123124125126127128129130131132133134135136137138139140141142143144145146147148149150151152153154155156157158159160161162163164165166167168169170171172173174175176177178179180181182183184185186187188189190191192193194195196197198199200201202203204205206207208209210211212213214215216217218219220221222223224225226227228229230231232233234235236237238239240241242243244245
  1. <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.1//EN"
  2. "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml11/DTD/xhtml11.dtd">
  3. <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en">
  4. <head>
  5. <title>Tor Server Configuration Instructions</title>
  6. <meta name="Author" content="Roger Dingledine" />
  7. <meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1" />
  8. <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="http://tor.eff.org/stylesheet.css" />
  9. <link rel="shortcut icon" type="image/x-icon" href="/favicon.ico" />
  10. </head>
  11. <body>
  12. <!-- TITLE BAR & NAVIGATION -->
  13. <table class="banner" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0">
  14. <tr>
  15. <td class="banner-left"></td>
  16. <td class="banner-middle">
  17. <a href="/index.html">Home</a>
  18. | <a href="/howitworks.html">How It Works</a>
  19. | <a href="/download.html">Download</a>
  20. | <a href="/documentation.html">Docs</a>
  21. | <a href="/users.html">Users</a>
  22. | <a href="/faq.html">FAQs</a>
  23. | <a href="/volunteer.html">Volunteer</a>
  24. | <a href="/developers.html">Developers</a>
  25. | <a href="/research.html">Research</a>
  26. | <a href="/people.html">People</a>
  27. </td>
  28. <td class="banner-right"></td>
  29. </tr>
  30. </table>
  31. <!-- END TITLE BAR & NAVIGATION -->
  32. <div class="center">
  33. <div class="main-column">
  34. <h1>Configuring a <a href="http://tor.eff.org/">Tor</a> server</h1>
  35. <br />
  36. <p>The Tor network relies on volunteers to donate bandwidth. If you have
  37. at least 20 kilobytes/s each way, please help out Tor by configuring
  38. your Tor to be a server too. Having servers in many different pieces
  39. of the Internet gives users more robustness against curious telcos and
  40. brute force attacks.</p>
  41. <p>Setting up a Tor server is easy and convenient:
  42. <ul>
  43. <li>Tor has built-in support for <a
  44. href="http://wiki.noreply.org/noreply/TheOnionRouter/TorFAQ#LimitBandwidth">rate
  45. limiting</a>. Further, if you have a fast link
  46. but want to limit the number of bytes per day
  47. (or week or month) that you donate, check out the <a
  48. href="http://wiki.noreply.org/noreply/TheOnionRouter/TorFAQ#Hibernation">hibernation
  49. feature</a>.
  50. </li>
  51. <li>Each Tor server has an <a
  52. href="http://wiki.noreply.org/noreply/TheOnionRouter/TorFAQ#RunAServerBut">exit
  53. policy</a> that specifies what sort of outbound connections are allowed
  54. or refused from that server. If you are uncomfortable allowing people
  55. to exit from your server, you can set it up to only allow connections
  56. to other Tor servers.
  57. </li>
  58. <li>It's fine if the server goes offline sometimes. The directories
  59. notice this quickly and stop advertising the server. Just try to make
  60. sure it's not too often, since connections using the server when it
  61. disconnects will break.
  62. </li>
  63. <li>We can handle servers with dynamic IPs just fine, as long as the
  64. server itself knows its IP. Have a look at this
  65. <a href="http://wiki.noreply.org/noreply/TheOnionRouter/TorFAQ#DynamicIP">
  66. entry in the FAQ</a>.
  67. </li>
  68. <li>If your server is behind a NAT and it doesn't know its public
  69. IP (e.g. it has an IP of 192.168.x.y), you'll need to set up port
  70. forwarding. Forwarding TCP connections is system dependent but <a
  71. href="http://wiki.noreply.org/noreply/TheOnionRouter/TorFAQ#ServerForFirewalledCli
  72. ents">this FAQ entry</a> offers some examples on how to do this.
  73. </li>
  74. <li>Your server will passively estimate and advertise its recent
  75. bandwidth capacity, so high-bandwidth servers will attract more users than
  76. low-bandwidth ones. Therefore having low-bandwidth servers is useful too.
  77. </li>
  78. </ul>
  79. <hr />
  80. <a id="zero"></a>
  81. <h2><a class="anchor" href="#zero">Step Zero: Download and Install Tor and Privoxy</a></h2>
  82. <br />
  83. <p>Before you start, you need to make sure that Tor is up and running.
  84. </p>
  85. <p>For Windows users, this means at least <a
  86. href="http://tor.eff.org/doc/tor-doc-win32.html#installing">step one</a>
  87. of the Windows Tor installation howto. Mac OS X users need to do at least
  88. <a href="http://tor.eff.org/doc/tor-doc-osx.html#installing">step one</a>
  89. of OS X Tor installation howto. Linux/BSD/Unix users should do at least
  90. <a href="http://tor.eff.org/doc/tor-doc-unix.html#installing">step one</a>
  91. of the Unix Tor installation howto.
  92. </p>
  93. <p>If it's convenient, you might also want to use it as a client for a
  94. while to make sure it's actually working.</p>
  95. <hr />
  96. <a id="one"></a>
  97. <h2><a class="anchor" href="#one">Step One: Set it up as a server</a></h2>
  98. <br />
  99. <ul>
  100. <li>1. Verify that your clock is set correctly. If possible, synchronize
  101. your clock with public time servers. Make sure name resolution works
  102. (that is, your computer can resolve addresses correctly).
  103. </li>
  104. <li>2. Edit the bottom part of your torrc. (See <a
  105. href="http://wiki.noreply.org/wiki/TheOnionRouter/TorFAQ#torrc">this
  106. FAQ entry</a> for help.)
  107. Make sure to define at least Nickname and ORPort. Create the DataDirectory
  108. if necessary, and make sure it's owned by the user that will be running
  109. tor.
  110. <li>3. If you are using a firewall, open a hole in your firewall so
  111. incoming connections can reach the ports you configured (ORPort, plus
  112. DirPort if you enabled it). Make sure you allow all outgoing connections,
  113. so your server can reach the other Tor servers.
  114. <li>4. Start your server: if you installed from source you can just
  115. run <tt>tor</tt>, whereas packages typically launch Tor from their
  116. initscripts or startup scripts. If it logs any warnings, address them. (By
  117. default Tor logs to stdout, but some packages log to <tt>/var/log/tor/</tt>
  118. instead. You can edit your torrc to configure log locations.)
  119. <li>5. Subscribe to the <a
  120. href="http://archives.seul.org/or/announce/">or-announce</a>
  121. mailing list. It is very low volume, and it will keep you informed
  122. of new stable releases. You might also consider subscribing to <a
  123. href="http://archives.seul.org/or/talk/">or-talk</a> (higher volume),
  124. where new development releases are announced.
  125. </li>
  126. </ul>
  127. <hr />
  128. <a id="two"></a>
  129. <h2><a class="anchor" href="#two">Step Two: Make sure it's working</a></h2>
  130. <br />
  131. <p>As soon as your server manages to connect to the network, it will
  132. try to determine whether the ports you configured are reachable from
  133. the outside. This may take several minutes. The log entries will keep
  134. you informed of its progress.</p>
  135. <p>When it decides that it's reachable, it will upload a "server
  136. descriptor" to the directories. This will let other clients know
  137. what address, ports, keys, etc your server is using. You can <a
  138. href="http://belegost.seul.org/">load the directory manually</a> and
  139. look through it to find the nickname you configured, to make sure it's
  140. there. You may need to wait a few seconds to give enough time for it to
  141. make a fresh directory.</p>
  142. <li>Once you are convinced it's working, <b>Register your server.</b>
  143. Send mail to <a
  144. href="mailto:tor-ops@freehaven.net">tor-ops@freehaven.net</a> with a
  145. subject of '[New Server] &lt;your server's nickname&gt;' and
  146. include the following information in the message:
  147. <ul>
  148. <li>Your server's nickname</li>
  149. <li>The fingerprint for your server's key (the contents of the
  150. "fingerprint" file in your DataDirectory -- on Windows, look in
  151. \<i>username</i>\Application&nbsp;Data\tor\ or \Application&nbsp;Data\tor\;
  152. on OS X, look in /Library/Tor/var/lib/tor/; and on Linux/BSD/Unix,
  153. look in /var/lib/tor or ~/.tor)
  154. </li>
  155. <li>Who you are, so we know whom to contact if a problem arises</li>
  156. <li>What kind of connectivity the new server will have</li>
  157. </ul>
  158. If you like, sign your mail using PGP.<br />
  159. Registering your server reserves your nickname so nobody else can take it,
  160. and lets us contact you if you need to upgrade or something goes wrong.
  161. </li>
  162. <hr />
  163. <a id="three"></a>
  164. <h2><a class="anchor" href="#three">Step Three: Once it's working</a></h2>
  165. <br />
  166. <p>
  167. Optionally, we recommend the following steps as well:
  168. </p>
  169. <ul>
  170. <li>6 (Unix only). Make a separate user to run the server. If you
  171. installed the OS X package or the deb or the rpm, this is already
  172. done. Otherwise, you can do it by hand. (The Tor server doesn't need to
  173. be run as root, so it's good practice to not run it as root. Running
  174. as a 'tor' user avoids issues with identd and other services that
  175. detect user name. If you're the paranoid sort, feel free to <a
  176. href="http://wiki.noreply.org/wiki/TheOnionRouter/TorInChroot">put Tor
  177. into a chroot jail</a>.)
  178. <li>7. Decide what exit policy you want. By default your server allows
  179. access to many popular services, but we restrict some (such as port 25)
  180. due to abuse potential. You might want an exit policy that is
  181. less restrictive or more restrictive; edit your torrc appropriately.
  182. If you choose a particularly open exit policy, you might want to make
  183. sure your ISP is ok with that choice.
  184. <li>8. If you installed from source, you may find the initscripts in
  185. contrib/tor.sh or contrib/torctl useful if you want to set up Tor to
  186. start at boot.
  187. <li>9. If you control the name servers for your domain, consider setting
  188. your hostname to 'anonymous' or 'proxy' or 'tor-proxy', so when other
  189. people see the address in their web logs, they will more quickly
  190. understand what's going on.
  191. <li>10. If your computer isn't running a webserver, please consider
  192. changing your ORPort to 443 and your DirPort to 80. Many Tor
  193. users are stuck behind firewalls that only let them browse the
  194. web, and this change will let them reach your Tor server. Win32
  195. servers can simply change their ORPort and DirPort directly
  196. in their torrc and restart Tor. OS X or Unix servers can't bind
  197. directly to these ports, so they will need to set up some sort of <a
  198. href="http://wiki.noreply.org/wiki/TheOnionRouter/TorFAQ#ServerForFirewalledClients">
  199. port forwarding</a> so connections can reach their Tor server. If you are
  200. using ports 80 and 443 already but still want to help out, other useful
  201. ports are 22, 110, and 143.
  202. </ul>
  203. When you change your Tor configuration, be sure to restart Tor, and
  204. remember to verify that your server still works correctly after the
  205. change.
  206. <hr />
  207. <p>If you have suggestions for improving this document, please post
  208. them on <a href="http://bugs.noreply.org/tor">our bugtracker</a> in the
  209. website category. Thanks!</p>
  210. </div><!-- #main -->
  211. </div>
  212. <div class="bottom" id="bottom">
  213. <i><a href="mailto:tor-webmaster@freehaven.net"
  214. class="smalllink">Webmaster</a></i> - $Id$
  215. </div>
  216. </body>
  217. </html>