[tor-relays] Running a relay, only, in win7

[Roger Dingledine]

On Tue, Jan 19, 2016 at 02:43:15PM +0000, je suis wrote:
> Even if I say I need to use win7 these days that doesn't mean I'm looking
> for an easy way to do it; as many steps as there are required, that's how
> many I'll take, but I'd rather be tor alone that runs, not a whole army. Is
> it possible or am I chasing a dream? Maybe reuse torrc and the tor key from
> linux (actually, that was what I was hoping for)?

Yes, this should be pretty easy to do. Grab the tor.exe out of the
tor browser (you might need the whole directory, if there are dll's
or something in it). Then grab your torrc and datadirectory from the
old relay:
https://www.torproject.org/docs/faq#UpgradeOrMove
Make sure the torrc points to the new datadirectory, and consider adding
a log file:
https://www.torproject.org/docs/faq#Logs

And then run "tor -f torrc" from a cmd shell.

Once you've got it working, there are probably ways to make it more
fun, e.g. making a batch file that you can click-click.

There is also, sometimes, a "Tor windows expert bundle" available on the
download page, which would mean you don't need to extract stuff from the
Tor Browser directory yourself. I say 'sometimes' because we haven't been
super great about keeping it up to date lately. Give it a try and see.

Oh, and lastly, there are still some fundamental limitations of fast
relays on Windows, e.g.
https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/98
which come from us believing the Windows developer documentation when
we shouldn't have:
https://www.torproject.org/docs/faq#BestOSForRelay

Good luck!
--Roger