Configuring Relay on Windows

Question

I know this question has been asked tons of times, I've read some answers and tor faq and manual, but still I'm unable to make it work.

I downloaded Expert Bundle from https://www.torproject.org/download/download.html.en , because I don't want a firefox process running.

File structure is pretty clean. Following https://www.torproject.org/docs/tor-doc-relay.html.en I created a file torrc in path\Data\Tor and added following code:

Log info file path/Data/info.log

ORPort 443
Exitpolicy reject *:*
Nickname ididntedittheconfig
ContactInfo human@...

BandwidthRate 100 KBytes
SocksListenAddress 0.0.0.0

I executed tor.exe and I see it running in Task Manager and in Comodo Firewall. It has no TCP In connections, only 2 TCP Out, to ports 995 and 9001.

Well I configured a normal FireFox to use proxy, with the same config a Tor Browser has, and it doesn't work. If I run Tor Browser, it works, and if I configure Firefox to use it it works. But with Expert Bundle it doesn't.

There's also no path/Data/info.log, so I can't follow "Make sure your relay is reachable" instructions.

Can somebody help me, at least to have a Tor proxy without its bundled browser?

Answer 1

I did it!

1. Instead of using the Expert Bundle, I used Tor Browser Bundle.
2. I downloaded latest vidalia from https://dist.torproject.org/vidalia-bundles/
3. I installed both separately.
4. I executed vidalia and configured it to execute Tor from Tor Browser and use its torrc.
5. In Sharing, I chose 3rd option and used ports 443 and 9030 and forwarded these ports in router.
6. In torrc I added ControlPort 9151 so that vidalia can connect to Tor.

There's no need to save log on file, vidalia show it. It reported the Excellent. Publishing server descriptor. message and in 1h I was being shown in Network and Bandiwdth Graph shows traffic.

Even though I'm using Tor Browser Bundle, FireFox isn't executed. vidalia runs tor.exe. Its FireFox uses 120MB, while vidalia uses 40MB. Normal FireFox is working when redirecting its proxy to Tor!

Answer 2

Okay, I have been working on this for a number of hours since I wanted a Tor Relay my self. I downloaded the Expert Bundle just as Hikari did then I copied the sample torrc file from https://gitweb.torproject.org/tor.git/plain/src/config/torrc.sample.in. I then began to edit the torrc file with what I wanted to use. I noted that it looked at C:\user\Your User Folder\AppData\Roaming\tor\ for the torrc file along with other files. After getting an error that stated "...Address already in use [WSAEADDRINUSE ]. Is Tor already running?" I Googled it and found that it might be a good idea to it as ORPort 443 NoListen ORPort 127.0.0.1:9001 NoAdvertise instead of just ORPort 443 or ORPort my IP Address:443. I also found that you need to use DataDirectory C:\path\Data\Tor GeoIPFile C:\path\Tor\geoip GeoIPv6File C:\path\Tor\geoip6 as this will kill the warnings for both geoip and geoip6 files.

My torrc is as follows minus my Nickname ContactInfo:

DataDirectory C:\path\Data\Tor GeoIPFile C:\path\Data\Tor\geoip GeoIPv6File C:\path\Data\Tor\geoip6 ORPort 443 NoListen ORPort 127.0.0.1:9001 NoAdvertise ExitPolicy reject *:* # no exits allowed

I then use C:\path\Tor\tor.exe --defaults-torrc C:\path\Data\Tor\torrc in command line and it seems to load.

To see all the command line options you can go to https://www.torproject.org/docs/tor-manual.html.en

Hopefully this helps.