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I have been a regular user of the Tor browser bundle for quite sometime. Lately, I switched to a faster connection and I have been wondering if I should be running my own Tor-relay. I took the plunge and ran into couple of issues.

I used Vidalia to setup Tor, gave it a nick and a contact email and all that. The opening of the ports is where I am facing an issue.

To my knowledge the OR (onion router) port is by default 9001 and the other port which the tutorial says is optional is the directory port which is by default 9030.

I opened them both on my cisco router, but I keep noticing the same error in the log file.

[Sat Dec 14 11:24:06 2013] Server Port Reachability Test Failed - Your relay's server port is not reachable by other Tor clients. This can happen if you are behind a router or firewall that requires you to set up port forwarding. If x.x.x.x:9001 is not your correct IP address and server port, please check your relay's configuration.
[Sat Dec 14 11:24:06 2013] Directory Port Reachability Test Failed - Your relay's directory port is not reachable by other Tor clients. This can happen if you are behind a router or firewall that requires you to set up port forwarding. If x.x.x.x:9030 is not your correct IP address and directory port, please check your relay's configuration.

Here are the contents of the torrc file.

AvoidDiskWrites 1
ContactInfo 
ControlPort 9151
DataDirectory /home/x/Downloads/tor-browser_en-US/Data/Tor
DirPort 9030
DirReqStatistics 0
ExitPolicy reject *:*
GeoIPFile ./Data/Tor/geoip
HashedControlPassword 
Log notice stdout
Nickname
ORPort 9001
RelayBandwidthBurst 10485760
RelayBandwidthRate 5242880
SocksListenAddress 127.0.0.1
SocksPort 9050

One last thing I would like to add, while pasting these log-files, I noticed that the IP-address that is mentioned is not my external IP-address, what I am missing?

One more thing I would like to add is I also port-forward another port for my bit-torrent client and its working with out any problem.

Update 1

The problem as pointed out by weasel, is that the Tor process is not able to bind to the correct external address, manually specifying the correct external address seems to be the solution.

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  • This has nothing to do with your question, but you should be aware that bandwidths are specified in Bytes per second unless you add a different unit. You should also be able to sustain it up and down simultaneously. 5MB seems high.
    – Jobiwan
    Dec 14, 2013 at 18:38

2 Answers 2

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The ip-adress that is mentioned is not my external ip-address

Edit your torrc to tell Tor your external IP, like this:

Address $external_IP
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  • This answer assumes that Tor uses this address for binding to it if ORPort doesn't specify a different address. Is that correct?
    – bastik
    Dec 14, 2013 at 17:51
  • I understand the address field in torrc. You said, "if ORPort doesn't specify a differnt address"? what do you mean by that?
    – feverDream
    Dec 14, 2013 at 17:58
  • 'Address' is the address that your relay will advertise that others will connect to. 'OrListenAddress' (and 'DirListenAddress') can be used to specify which IP to bind to if your host has multiple IP addresses.
    – Jobiwan
    Dec 14, 2013 at 18:15
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    @Jobiwan, I looked it up in the manual and it says 'ORListenaddress' is deprecated, but it does not tell if ORPort has to specify the address again if 'Address" is set.
    – bastik
    Dec 14, 2013 at 18:19
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    @bastik,@Jobiwan thanks. It updated the torrc file and it works now.
    – feverDream
    Dec 14, 2013 at 22:46
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One last thing I would like to add, while pasting these log-files, I noticed that the ip-adress that is mentioned is not my external ip-address, what I am missing?

That's probably exactly the problem. If Tor doesn't know its external IP address, it cannot produce a correct descriptor. Also, its reachability tests will fail.

Unfortunately you did not provide any info that would allow us to verify whether your relay works.

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    The answer section should contain an answer. :-) If you want to comment on the OP it is better to use add comment.
    – Jens Kubieziel
    Dec 14, 2013 at 13:41

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