My Tor relay running on a BeagleBone Black is even faster after upgrading to Debian 8 (Jessie) and TorProject.org tor 0.2.6 package for Jessie:
Thanks to Alison Macrina of the Library Freedom Project for the motivation to upgrade after watching her inspiring talk during the Aaron Swartz's Day 2015 celebration at Internet Archive last weekend:
A quick aside, if you've not seen this documentary about Aaron's life, then please be sure to watch it:
And... thanks to Comcast. Despite their past sins, I've been able to run a Tor exit node (e.g. exit relay) via my cable modem connection for 1.5 years with no problems. My connect is 50 Mbps down and 10 Mbps up.
https://gist.github.com/pdp7/597d66f5178781eb5007
Previous version
My BBB had previously been running Debian 7 (Wheezy) for which TorProject.org package was 0.2.4.
Reduced Exit Policy
If you run a Tor exit node, then I recommend using this Reduced Exit Policy which will limit BitTorrent traffic (and thus DMCA complaints):
https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/wiki/doc/ReducedExitPolicy
Debian 8 image
My BeagleBone Black is running this Debian 8.2 (Jessie) image from Robert C Nelson listed on eLinux.org:
Flasher: (console) (BeagleBone Black/Green eMMC):
sha256sum: 3c489ef2d6809a7b50396d16770752a8c067478680946428d12a747bb8c4688f
Background:
I've not posted about my Tor relay on element14 Community before, so I figure I should provide some context.
Last year I did a presentation at my hackerspace about how to run a Tor relay on a BeagleBone Black:
If that Meetup link breaks over time, then here is a GitHub Gist all my notes and links:
I was inspired to run a Tor relay after watching these talks:
Tor for users
Talks by Josh Datko about Tor & BeagleBone
Tor on BeagleBone blog posts:
- Running a Tor Relay on the BeagleBone Black for about a year
- BeagleBone Tor
- Received my Tor t-shirt!
- Hulu Blocks Tor
- Hacker-in-Residence: BeagleBone Shields
- New hacker-in-residence Josh Datko is joining us to work with the BeagleBone Black on internet privacy!
Run a your own Tor relay!
- EFF Tor Challenge
- Configuring a Tor relay on Debian/Ubuntu
- How to Run a Secure Tor Server
- Tor Blog: The lifecycle of a new relay
- TOR FAQ: What bandwidth shaping options are available to Tor relays?
- Legal FAQ
- Abuse FAQ
Stats for my BeagleBone Black relay
Notes for Tor Relay running as Exit Node
- DO NOT RUN YOUR TOR RELAY AS AN EXIT NODE UNLESS YOU UNDERSTAND THE IMPLICATIONS
- Exit Node with Reduced Exit policy
- Tips for Running an Exit Node with Minimal Harassment
Not into running a Tor relay home?
- use DigitalOcean!
- $5/mo for a "droplet" which is a virtual private server
- Choose Debian 8 for OS
- Easy to install Tor via apt-get
- My DigitalOcean non-exit tor relay config:
# file: /etc/tor/torrc
ORPort 443
Exitpolicy reject *:*
Nickname EFFisMyHero
ContactInfo pdp7pdp7 AT gmail dot com GPG: 0x84D44A9317F1138E
Log notice file /var/log/tor/notices.log
RelayBandwidthRate 1024 KB
RelayBandwidthBurst 1024 KB
MaxAdvertisedBandwidth 1024 KB
DisableDebuggerAttachment 0
Stats for my EFFisMyHero relay on DigitalOcean:
- Atlas
- Globe
- blutmagie.de
- Note: I have retired EFFisMyHero as of November 2015 and started a new relay called ThankYouEFF
Not into running your own Tor relay?
- Donate to NoiseTor
- Highest performing exit nodes (e.g. relays) in USA
- Created by groovy folks at Noisebridge hackerspace in SF
- I happily donate to it monthly!
- Relay Stats