🧅 Setup a Tor Relay

This guide walks through setting up a non-exit Tor relay on Debian, including:

automatic security updates
Tor installation
relay configuration
monitoring

🔄 1. Enable Automatic Updates

Keeping your server updated is critical.

Update packages

apt update
apt install unattended-upgrades apt-listchanges

Configure unattended upgrades

nano /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/50unattended-upgrades

Replace the `Allowed-Origins` section with:

Unattended-Upgrade::Allowed-Origins {
  "${distro_id}:${distro_codename}-security";
  "TorProject:${distro_codename}";
};

Unattended-Upgrade::Automatic-Reboot "true";

Test it

unattended-upgrade --debug

🧅 2. Install Tor

Install prerequisites

apt install apt-transport-https

Check your Debian version

cat /etc/debian_version

Add Tor repository

nano /etc/apt/sources.list.d/tor.list

Add:

deb [signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/tor-archive-keyring.gpg] https://deb.torproject.org/torproject.org {yourdistro} main
deb-src [signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/tor-archive-keyring.gpg] https://deb.torproject.org/torproject.org {yourdistro} main

👉 Replace {yourdistro} with your Debian codename (e.g. bookworm)

Add GPG key

wget -qO- https://deb.torproject.org/torproject.org/A3C4F0F979CAA22CDBA8F512EE8CBC9E886DDD89.asc \
| gpg --dearmor \
| tee /usr/share/keyrings/tor-archive-keyring.gpg >/dev/null

Install Tor

apt update
apt install tor deb.torproject.org-keyring

⚙️ 3. Configure Tor Relay

Open config file

nano /etc/tor/torrc

Example relay configuration

## RELAY IDENTITY
Nickname MyRelay
ContactInfo your@email

## NETWORK
ORPort 443
ExitRelay 0
SocksPort 0

## BANDWIDTH LIMIT (≈800GB/month)
AccountingMax 800 GB
AccountingStart month 1 0:00

## BANDWITH SPEED LIMIT
RelayBandwidthRate 10 MB
RelayBandwidthBurst 20 MB

## MONITORING
ControlPort 9051
CookieAuthentication 1
CookieAuthFileGroupReadable 1

👉 This config creates a non-exit relay (safer, recommended for beginners)

Enable and start Tor

systemctl enable tor
systemctl restart tor

📊 4. Monitor Your Relay

Install Nyx

apt install nyx

Run Nyx

nyx

👉 Nyx provides:

real-time bandwidth usage
relay status
connection stats

✅ Final Notes

Allow port 443 in your firewall
Port forward if behind a router
Give it time (relay needs hours/days to be fully recognized)

🚀 Conclusion

You now have a working Tor relay with:

automatic updates 🔄
controlled bandwidth 📊
monitoring tools 🧠

Running a relay helps support privacy and decentralization on the internet.

Questions / idea? Open an issue on GitHub.