[tor-relays] Making your relay submit hidden service statistics

[George Kadianakis]

Hello people,

some days ago we sent a mail [1] asking for feedback on our patch
that collects hidden service statistics from Tor relays.

Specifically, we are trying to answer the questions: "Approximately
how many hidden services are there?" and "Approximately how much
traffic of the Tor network is going to hidden services?". For more
information see my previous email and the relevant proposals.

Our code [2] got merged in upstream Tor some days ago and now we are
looking for more volunteers to enable it on their relays. We will
collect these statistics during the next [days] weeks, and in a month
we plan to publish a short report with our findings.

To help us you will need to use the very latest version of Tor and
also slightly edit your torrc. Here are some instructions for
Debian/Ubuntu [3]:

-----

Let's start by slightly editing your regular Tor torrc to enable
hidden service statistics. Please append the folowing to your regular
torrc (not including quotes):
"""
HiddenServiceStatistics 1
"""

Now, we need to install a bleeding edge version of Tor that can do
hidden service statistics. You can either use the git master [3], or
use Tor's APT repositories. The following instructions help you with
the latter approach.

Please start by following "Option two" of
https://www.torproject.org/docs/debian so that you add the proper APT
repositories and install tor and the deb.torproject.org-keyring
package.

Next, add the following line to your sources.lst:
   deb http://deb.torproject.org/torproject.org tor-nightly-master-wheezy main
(you might need to replace 'wheezy' with your distribution, like you
did in the previous step)

Now, do
# apt-get update
# apt-get install tor
which should upgrade your Tor to the latest nightly version., 

Your system Tor should now be up-to-date and able to collect hidden
service statistics!  Just start Tor as you normally do, using the
torrc we modified above.  For example you could simply do:
# tor -f torrc
but feel free to use your init script if you prefer that.

Now just leave your relay do its thing, and keep an eye to this
mailing list around mid-January 2015 for the results of our research.

---

FWIW, if you are not using Debian, you can use the master branch of
the official git repository: https://git.torproject.org/tor.git
You will also need to edit your torrc in the same manner as the Debian
instructions.

Feel free to reply with any questions you have! 

Thanks!

George Kadianakis
Karsten Loesing
Aaron Johnson
David Goulet

[1]: https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-dev/2014-December/007968.html
[2]: https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/13192
[3]: for example see http://tor.stackexchange.com/questions/75/how-can-i-install-tor-from-the-source-code-in-the-git-repository