How to add a v3 directory authority. What we'll be doing: We'll be configuring your Tor server as a v3 directory authority, generating a v3 identity key plus certificates, and adding your v3 identity fingerprint to the list of default directory authorities. The steps: 0) Make sure you're running ntp, and that your time is correct. Make sure you have Tor version at least r11953. In the short term, running a working authority may mean running the latest version of Tor from SVN trunk. Later on, we hope that it will become easier and you can just run a recent development release (and later still, a recent stable release). 1) First, you'll need a certificate. Run ./src/tools/tor-gencert to generate one. Run tor-gencert in a separate, very secure directory. Maybe even on a more secure computer. The first time you run it, you will need to run it with the --create-identity-key option to make a v3 authority identity key. Subsequent times, you can just run it as-is. tor-gencert will make 3 files: authority_identity_key -- THIS IS VERY SECRET AND VERY SENSITIVE. DO NOT LEAK IT. DO NOT LOSE IT. authority_signing_key -- A key for signing votes and v3 conensuses. authority_certificate -- A document authenticating your signing key with your identity-key. You will need to rotate your signing key periodically. The current default lifetime is 1 year. We'll probably take this down to a month or two some time soon. To rotate your key, run tor-gencert as before, but without the --create-identity-key option. 2) Copy authority_signing_key and authority_certificate to your Tor keys directory. For example if your data directory is /var/lib/tor/, you should run cp authority_signing_key authority_certificate /var/lib/tor/keys/ You will need to repeat this every time you rotate your certificate. 3) Tell your Tor to be a v3 authority by adding these lines to your torrc: AuthoritativeDirectory 1 V3AuthoritativeDirectory 1 4) Now your authority is generating a networkstatus opinion (called a "vote") every period, but none of the other authorities care yet. The next step is to get a Tor developer (likely Roger or Nick) to add your v3 identity fingerprint to the default list of dirservers. First, you need to learn your authority's v3 identity fingerprint. It should be in your authority_certificate file in a line like: fingerprint 3041632465FA8847A98B2C5742108C72325532D9 One of the Tor developers then needs to add this fingerprint to the add_default_trusted_dirservers() function in config.c, using the syntax "v3ident=". For example, if moria1's new v3 identity fingerprint is FOO, the moria1 dirserver line should now be: DirServer moria1 v1 orport=9001 v3ident=FOO 128.31.0.34:9031 FFCB 46DB 1339 DA84 674C 70D7 CB58 6434 C437 0441 The v3ident item must appear after the nickname and before the IP. 5) Once your fingerprint has been added to config.c, we will try to get a majority of v3 authorities to upgrade, so they know about you too. At that point your vote will automatically be included in the networkstatus consensus, and you'll be a fully-functioning contributing v3 authority. Note also that a majority of the configured v3 authorities need to agree in order to generate a consensus: so this is also the point where extended downtime on your server means missing votes.