[tor-relays] MyFamily

[trinity pointard]

> This has probably been addressed before but why isn't the MyFamily value just a single, unique ID?

There is a proposal to have some way of doing that in the future, but
that proposal isn't implemented
https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/core/torspec/-/blob/main/proposals/321-happy-families.md
. It's not as easy as having a unique ID, you need to make sure a
relay can't spoof being part of a family, that's why it requires a two
way relationship for now, and will probably use some form of signature
in the future.

> What do you do when you have 50 relays and want to add or remove a relay? You must modify 50 torrc files and restart all 50 relays? That seems tedious and unnecessary.

Sadly, yes it is. You can reload the relays instead of restarting
them, which is somewhat better but still not great. On thing that can
help is using the %include feature of torrc to have your MyFamily line
in a distinct file you can easily copy around. That's not great, but
still easier/safer than editing a configuration file automatically.

regards,

trinity-1686a

On Mon, 15 May 2023 at 11:22, Matt Palmer <mpalmer at hezmatt.org> wrote:
>
> On Sat, May 13, 2023 at 12:55:17PM -0400, denny.obreham at a-n-o-n-y-m-e.net wrote:
> > This has probably been addressed before but why isn't the MyFamily value
> > just a single, unique ID?
> >
> > If I have the relays with the fingerprints "John", "Jane", and "Alice" and
> > I want to add "Bob", wouldn't it be simpler (and more logical) to add the
> > unique MyFamily "Smith" to each torrc file than listing all fingerprints?
>
> I believe the reason for the current setup is to prevent randos from adding
> themselves to your family of relays, and then causing problems.
>
> - Matt
>
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