Tor on linux - how to select exit nodes manually

Question

On windows, there is an application called Advanced Onion Router (or, AdvTOR) which lets you choose your tor exit nodes, and it lists them all out. This is great, because some exit nodes have bandwidths that are thousands of times faster then that of others. On Linux, however, we don't have AdvTOR. There is a similar program called SelekTOR, but I found it unstable and really it didn't work because it would say it was connected to a certain node when it really wasn't.

A list of tor nodes is here: https://torstatus.blutmagie.de/

And for the sake of this question let's say I wanted my exit node to be Orion:

orion.enn.lu [94.242.246.24]

From what I have researched, you can change your exit node manually in the torrc file. If there are other ways, please let me know, I just need to know how to manually set my exit node to , for example, Orion listed above.

EDIT: I don't necessarily need to do it manually. I'm on Ubuntu 15. if there are any programs with GUI's that would make this easier, let me know.

Appreciate in advance anyone helping or looking at this. ;)

Answer 1

You can use the ExitNodes directive to restrict which exit nodes your client picks.
From the Tor manual:

ExitNodes node,node, ...
A list of identity fingerprints, country codes, and address patterns of nodes to use as exit node [...]

• Fingerprints: ABCD1234CDEF5678ABCD1234CDEF5678ABCD1234 (so without spaces)
• Country Codes: {us}, {de}, {nl}
• Address Patterns: 123.45.67.0/24, 98.76.0.0/16

So in your case, where you want one specific node, you can use the fingerprint. (Click on the nickname in the list you linked to.)

See also StrictNodes:

StrictNodes 0 | 1
If StrictNodes is set to 1, Tor will treat the ExcludeNodes option as a requirement to follow for all the circuits you generate, even if doing so will break functionality for you.