On Sunday, October 10, 2021 at 4:49:16 AM UTC-4 sysmanager7 via tor-relays wrote:
Greetings All, I have three relays that are in need of an upgrade and reboot.
What is the best way to restart these relays without loosing flags or time?
We routinely reboot our nodes for kernel updates and retain the stable flag. High uptime is not something to brag about for a tor node, so don't worry about that.
If you're running a debian-based linux distro, you can have unattended-upgrades[0] do the work for you and warn you via email. There are tools that will allow for similar workflows for other OSes, eg. with dnf on rpm-based distros[1].
Secondly how long can a relay be down before flags are dropped?
I don't know the upper bound, but twice I've migrated keys from an old piece of hardware to a new piece of hardware when the support warranty expired, and that node still has the stable flag. I took my time and did the migration carefully. It's far more important that you follow the advice[2] on how to keep your relay in good shape once it's up and running than that you find the limits of certain flags.
Cheers!
--
ibiblio Tor Manager
[1] https://dnf.readthedocs.io/en/latest/automatic.html
[2] https://community.torproject.org/relay/setup/post-install/