[Tor-BSD] Hi new list/Recommended operating platforms

[Brian Callahan]

(Some snipping of the "hellos")

On Tue, 19 Feb 2013, George Rosamond wrote:

> On 02/19/13 14:52, Brian Callahan wrote:
>> 
>> 
>> On Tue, 19 Feb 2013, George Rosamond wrote:
>>> 
>>> First thing I'd note is that one of the weaknesses of Tor's network is
>>> that it's overwhelmingly Linux, and thus a monoculture.  There are OSX,
>>> FreeBSD, Windows and OpenBSD relays out there, but I think enabling the
>>> BSDs to be a better performing platform would help diversify the base.
>>> 
>>> A very useful list:
>>> 
>>> http://torstatus.blutmagie.de/
>>> 
>> 
>> OK, so looking over this list, it looks like all the major BSDs are
>> represented to varying degrees (even the Bitrig guys have a cluster
>> running on Bitrig).
>> 
>> According to that site, it looks closer to a biculture of Linux and
>> Windows, but I admit that this could be deceiving, and it's really a
>> monoculture of Linux.
> 
> Yes, but I should have been a bit clearer:
> 
> in terms of numbers, yes, a bi-culture.  But in terms of high-bandwidth
> relays, it's a Linux monoculture.  Lots of those Windows boxes are
> low-bandwidth clients who enable relaying, I'd guess.
>

Ah, and such is the deceptive nature of charts, especially when I only peruse 
them ;)

Yup, you're absolutely right on the Linux monoculture.

>> 
>>> So it's in the FAQ:
>>> 
>>> https://www.torproject.org/docs/faq.html.en#RelayMemory
>>> 
>>> But AFAIK, all the BSDs have lower performance than the Linuxes with
>>> Tor, and I only started recently to dive into the related sysctl knobs.
>>> Then again, benchmarking is another big path to dive into...
>>> 
>> 
>> This should be relatively easy to diagnose, and quite possible that some
>> of the information on that FAQ is outdated (i.e. is Tor on
>> OpenBSD/NetBSD/Solaris still forking processes instead of using threads?
>> Again, should be relatively easy to at least diagnose).
> 
> Oh, very much.  But then it needs to be corrected with hard data.
>

Agreed.

>> 
>> I don't have the spare hardware to test this myself atm (nor do I have
>> an ISP nice enough to let me run a Tor relay) but if someone out there
>> is running Tor on OpenBSD, I'd be interested in your outlook on this.
>> 
> 
> So we had a full OpenBSD relay in the NYC*BUG cabinet a long while back,
> but it prompted an inquiry from a certain 3 letter government agency due
> to some of the exit traffic.
> 
> Now we have two Tor boxes: one a relay with no exit traffic (NYCBUG0).
> The other a bridge.  Both run FreeBSD.  I'll post some stats on those
> boxes at some point, but the bridge has been up a long time.
> 
> If we can't find you hardware, then we could probably just convert the
> bridge into an OpenBSD relay for your purposes.  However, the bridge is
> i386 FWIW.
>

I can't imagine that would be a problem. Just as long as it has enough RAM (the 
FAQ seems to recommend > 1GB).

~Brian