This is The Onion Pack, a Tor Relay Bundle for Windows. It allows you to install everything you need to run a Tor relay (or a Tor bridge) on your Windows computer system & offers you a smart interface to monitor and control your relay.
Statement of Independence
This product is produced independently from the Tor(R) anonymity software and carries no guarantee from The Tor Project about quality, suitability or anything else.
To install The Onion Pack on your Windows computer, download & run TheOnionPack.exe , its installation programm.
This installation program is going to perform a number of tasks:
- Locate, download & install the latest Tor Windows Expert Bundle from the official sources at torproject.org.
- Download & install a version of Embeddable Python from the official sources at python.org.
- Setup an appropriate Python environment.
- Download & install The Onion Box (Dashboard to monitor Tor node operations) from the Python Package Index.
and finally
- Install The Onion Pack - a python script to control the Tor relay as well as The Onion Box.
There's - usually - one additional activity necessary to finish the setup of The Onion Pack & your new personal Tor relay: You need to tell your router / firewall to forward at least one port to your local Windows system:
Tor - if operated as a relay or bridge - expects that clients can connect to its ORPort. If this port is not reachable from the voids of the internet, the relay will not announce it's presence - thus will not be of any use. Therefore you have to ensure that connections can be established to this ORPort.
The default value for the ORPort of any Tor relay is 9001. You may alter this via torrc.
When you run The Onion Pack, it launches your Tor relay - setup according to the configuration you defined - and The Onion Box. If both actions have been performed successfully, The Onion Pack puts an icon into the tray of your desktop.
This icon provides a context menu ... to monitor your Tor relay and to control it:
| Tray Menu Command | Action |
|---|---|
| Monitor... | Open The Onion Box, the dashboard to monitor your relay. Default (right click) action. |
| Relay Control | |
| Edit configuration file... | Opens torrc, the configuration file of your relay. You may edit & save this file to change the setup of your Tor relay. |
| Show logfile... | Show the log messages of your Tor relay. This might be useful in case of trouble! |
| Reload relay configuration... | If you've edited torrc to modify the configuration definition of your relay, you need to reload this configuration into the relay. |
| Stop! | Terminate The Onion Pack |
By intension the Tor instance initially installed by The Onion Pack is not operating in relay mode - yet as a Tor client.
If you deliberately decide to establish a relay, edit the configuration file: Tray menu > Relay Control > Edit configuration file...
This will open an editor window - showing an empty file.
Prerequisite to become a relay is the definition of an ORPort :
ORPort 9001
Remember to define the port number in accordance to your port forwarding settings established at your router!
Additionally you should at least give a name to your relay and define the ContactInfo parameter.
ORPort 9001
Nickname myRelay
ContactInfo mail at mymail dot com
As it is explicitely discouraged to run an Exit Relay on any computer system at home, you should - equally explicit - express your request to disable the exit functionality:
ORPort 9001
Nickname myRelay
ContactInfo mail at mymail dot com
ExitRelay 0
Please make yourself familiar with the official documentation at torproject.org, especially the Tor Manual, to understand the capabilities of a Tor relay and the power of all its configuration parameters!
You may & should define further configuration parameters ... and if done, save the modified torrc.
To enable this configuration, you need to tell your Tor node to reload it's configuration file: Tray menu > Relay Control > Reload relay configuration
Afterwards you may either check the logfile of your relay ( Tray menu > Relay control > Show logfile... ) or open the dashboard to monitor your relay: Tray menu > Monitor...
Have fun!
I'd like to express my humble respect to @jordanrussel and @martjinlaan for their dedication to Inno Setup. This is an amazing piece of software providing endless opportunities to create powerfull installers. Thanks a lot for your efforts to maintain this gem in code over years, offering it's brilliant capabilities to the community.