Bridge or Snowflake? low RAM VPS

Tor bridge or snowflake?

What is difference if i have VPS with around 400MB RAM free and like half or less of the CPU core free?
I was running relay and it was pretty heavy on CPU, had to significantly decrease bandwidth limit.
But stopped, now i wish something more lightweight.
Which one is more needed to be ran to help Russian/Iranian/Chinese users?

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Right now, a snowflake standalone proxy is more needed. We don’t have enough unrestricted NAT proxies.

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Any tutorial or guide to install snowflake on Debian GNU/Linux 9.11 (stretch) // Release: 9.11 // Codename: stretch ??

I tried the guide on Tor Project | Standalone Snowflake proxy but i failed gracefully

I would do “rm /etc/apt/sources.list.d/docker.list” and then

Attempt to run Snowflake proxy on Linux. For Windows check official page.
NOTES: 1) commands are executed as a root ($ sudo su), 2) if you install in different path than /root/snowflake/proxy/proxy make sure to replace this path by yours 1+ times below.

cd;git clone https://git.torproject.org/pluggable-transports/snowflake.git
cd snowflake/proxy
go build # go was not available, and installing package golang-go fixed it, on Deb/Ubuntu: apt install golang-go
crontab -l 2>/dev/null; echo "@reboot $(which nohup|head -n 1) /root/snowflake/proxy/proxy &" | crontab -

(source)

add new script: nano /etc/cron.hourly/snowflake
with content:

#!/bin/bash
if [[ "$(ps auxf|grep -iE 'snowflake'|grep -Ev 'grep'|wc -l)" == "0" ]];then
$(which nohup|head -n 1) /root/snowflake/proxy/proxy &
fi

chmod 755 /etc/cron.hourly/snowflake

and hopefully it will keep run on background & be working. How to verify that it is working?
I can run the proxy binary (…/…/snowflake/proxy/proxy) with parameters: “-log logfilename -verbose” and monitor the logfilename. I could see there was some connections. Frequent “Timed out waiting for client to open data channel.” was said to be normal behavior - not all times there is demand from outside.

Somehow go build doesn’t work. Any ideea?

After seeing article [tor-relays] Help Turkmens to bypass Internet censorship: run an obfs4 bridge! that says “different pluggable transports, like Snowflake, and entire IP ranges, have been blocked in the country” (Turkmenistan), they ask to setup OBFS4 bridge on home computer and one “won’t need a static IPv4”. Though setup guide Tor Project | Bridge requirement is “The ability to expose TCP ports to the Internet (make sure that NAT doesn’t get in the way)”. I can try to check if it will work for me forwarding on router or enabling DMZ.

Should i pause Snowflake on my home computer and run OBFS4 instead or should i permanently switch to OBFS4?

How much traffic are you seeing in your snowflake proxy?

If your home connection change the IP more than once a day, then a snowflake proxy is still a better way to contribute.

should i permanently switch to OBFS4?

First, we will need to test if your bridge will work there. If your IP range is blocked in TM, then you will probably want to move back to a snowflake proxy.

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2023/04/16 In the last 24h0m0s, there were 30 connections. Traffic Relayed ↑ 155 MB, ↓ 11 MB.
2023/04/17 In the last 24h0m0s, there were 21 connections. Traffic Relayed ↑ 117 MB, ↓ 18 MB.
2023/04/18 In the last 24h0m0s, there were 26 connections. Traffic Relayed ↑ 674 MB, ↓ 123 MB.
2023/04/19 In the last 24h0m0s, there were 20 connections. Traffic Relayed ↑ 840 MB, ↓ 91 MB.
2023/04/20 In the last 24h0m0s, there were 17 connections. Traffic Relayed ↑ 34 MB, ↓ 6 MB.
(it is running from within restricted NAT LAN)

no, not daily, change is rare… :+1:

Tor OBFS does not work for me per this topic of mine (no one yet responded): LAN based OBFS4 bridge is not reachable - Your server has not managed to confirm reachability for its ORPort(s) so i am staying with Snowflake until someone suggest in that topic on what to try to make OBFS running.