Re: Default ORPort 443 [was: Re: German data rentention law]

[Roger Dingledine <arma@xxxxxxx>]

On Sun, Oct 19, 2008 at 08:44:09AM -0400, Erilenz wrote:
> I just took a quick glance and there seem to be at least a couple of hundred
> nodes running an OR port on 443, so people must be taking note of the
> documentation at http://www.torproject.org/docs/tor-doc-relay.html.en

Actually, Vidalia on Windows defaults to port 443 for your relay. Windows
doesn't have this sissy concept of "privileged ports", you see. ;)

(Vidalia on non-Windows defaults to 9001 still.)

As another data point, Tor 0.2.0.3-alpha learned how to bind ports
before it drops privileges:
    - Create listener connections before we setuid to the configured
      User and Group. Now non-Windows users can choose port values
      under 1024, start Tor as root, and have Tor bind those ports
      before it changes to another UID. (Windows users could already
      pick these ports.)

So if your initscript starts Tor as root, you can just set
  ORPort 443
without messing with any port forwarding.

Debian (and thus probably Ubuntu) Tor users who use the deb can do
this now by default. Perhaps other packages will allow it soon too,
or do already?

--Roger