tor-guard-relay/docs/TOOLS.md

🛠️ Tools Reference Guide

Tor Guard Relay v1.1.1 includes 4 essential diagnostic tools built directly into the ultra-optimized ~20 MB container. All tools are busybox-compatible, executable without file extensions, and designed for production use.

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📋 Tool Overview

Tool	Purpose	Output Format	Notes
status	Complete relay health report	Text (emoji)	Full diagnostic dashboard
health	JSON health diagnostics	JSON	Machine-readable for monitoring
fingerprint	Display relay fingerprint	Text	With Tor Metrics link
bridge-line	Get obfs4 bridge line	Text	Bridge mode only

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🔧 Tool Details

status

Purpose: Comprehensive relay health and status report with emoji formatting

Usage:

docker exec tor-relay status

Output Example:

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
🧅 Tor Relay Status
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

🚀 Status:      RUNNING (PID: 123)
✅ Bootstrap:   100% COMPLETE
🌐 ORPort:      REACHABLE
🪪 Nickname:    MyGuardRelay
🔑 Fingerprint: ABCD1234...WXYZ9876
✅ Errors:      0
⏱️  Uptime:      2d 14h 30m

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
💡 Tip: Use 'docker logs -f <container>' for live logs
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Exit Codes:

• 0 - Status retrieved successfully
• 1 - Tor service not running or error

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health

Purpose: Machine-readable JSON health check for monitoring systems and automation

Usage:

docker exec tor-relay health

# Parse with jq
docker exec tor-relay health | jq .status

Output Example:

{
  "status": "up",
  "pid": 123,
  "uptime": "2d 14h 30m",
  "bootstrap": 100,
  "reachable": "true",
  "errors": 0,
  "nickname": "MyGuardRelay",
  "fingerprint": "ABCD1234567890ABCDEF1234567890ABCDEFGHIJ"
}

Status Values:

• up - Relay is running and healthy
• down - Relay is not running
• error - Critical issues detected

Exit Codes:

• 0 - Health check completed
• 1 - Critical error or Tor not running

Integration Example:

#!/bin/bash
# Simple health monitoring script
HEALTH=$(docker exec tor-relay health)
STATUS=$(echo "$HEALTH" | jq -r '.status')

if [ "$STATUS" != "up" ]; then
  echo "ALERT: Relay is $STATUS"
  # Send notification
fi

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fingerprint

Purpose: Display relay fingerprint with direct links to Tor Metrics

Usage:

docker exec tor-relay fingerprint

Output Example:

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
🔑 Relay Fingerprint
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

🪪 Nickname:    MyTorRelay
🔑 Fingerprint: ABCD 1234 5678 90AB CDEF 1234 5678 90AB CDEF 1234

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

🔗 Tor Metrics: https://metrics.torproject.org/rs.html#details/ABCD...

💡 Your relay will appear in Tor Metrics after 1-2 hours

Exit Codes:

• 0 - Fingerprint retrieved
• 1 - Fingerprint not yet available (still bootstrapping)

When Available:

• Guard/Middle relays: ~1-2 hours after first start
• Exit relays: ~1-2 hours after first start
• Bridges: Not published publicly (by design)

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bridge-line

Purpose: Get the obfs4 bridge line for sharing with users (bridge mode only)

Usage:

docker exec tor-bridge bridge-line

Output Example:

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
🌉 obfs4 Bridge Line
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Bridge obfs4 203.0.113.42:9002 ABCD...WXYZ cert=abc123...xyz789 iat-mode=0

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

📋 Sharing Guidelines:
   • Only share with people you trust
   • Do NOT publish publicly
   • Helps users in censored countries

💡 Bridge line available 24-48 hours after first start

Exit Codes:

• 0 - Bridge line retrieved
• 1 - Bridge line not yet available or not in bridge mode

When Available:

• Bridges take 24-48 hours after first start to generate the bridge line
• The bridge line is stored in /var/lib/tor/pt_state/obfs4_bridgeline.txt
• Also visible in logs: docker logs <container> | grep "bridge line"

Important:

• Only works in bridge mode (TOR_RELAY_MODE=bridge)
• Requires persistent volumes for /var/lib/tor
• Bridge addresses are NOT published in public directories

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🚀 Common Workflows

1. Quick Health Check

# Visual status check
docker exec tor-relay status

# JSON health check for automation
docker exec tor-relay health | jq .status

# Check bootstrap progress
docker exec tor-relay health | jq .bootstrap

2. Find Your Relay on Tor Metrics

# Get fingerprint and metrics link
docker exec tor-relay fingerprint

# Wait 1-2 hours after first start
# Click the Tor Metrics link or search manually

3. Share Your Bridge

# Get bridge line (bridge mode only)
docker exec tor-bridge bridge-line

# Wait 24-48 hours after first start
# Share ONLY with trusted users, NOT publicly

4. Automated Monitoring

# Simple monitoring script
while true; do
  STATUS=$(docker exec tor-relay health | jq -r '.status')
  BOOTSTRAP=$(docker exec tor-relay health | jq -r '.bootstrap')

  echo "[$(date)] Status: $STATUS | Bootstrap: $BOOTSTRAP%"

  if [ "$STATUS" != "up" ]; then
    # Send alert
    echo "ALERT: Relay is down!"
  fi

  sleep 60
done

5. Check Logs

# View recent logs
docker logs --tail 100 tor-relay

# Follow logs in real-time
docker logs -f tor-relay

# Filter for errors
docker logs tor-relay 2>&1 | grep -i error

# Filter for warnings
docker logs tor-relay 2>&1 | grep -i warn

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🔐 Security Notes

• All tools run as non-root tor user
• Tools are read-only and don't modify relay state
• No sensitive data exposed (fingerprints are public by design)
• Bridge lines should be shared privately, not published
• Logs contain no user traffic data (Tor privacy design)

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🐛 Troubleshooting

Tool not found

# Verify tools exist
docker exec tor-relay ls -la /usr/local/bin/

# Should show: status, health, fingerprint, bridge-line

# Check PATH
docker exec tor-relay echo $PATH

Permission denied

# Should not happen - tools are set to +x in Dockerfile
# If it does, rebuild image:
docker build --no-cache -t tor-relay:latest .

Empty output or errors

# Check if Tor is running
docker exec tor-relay ps aux | grep tor

# Check logs for errors
docker logs tor-relay | tail -50

# Restart container
docker restart tor-relay

Fingerprint not available

# Normal during bootstrap (first 5-15 minutes)
# Check bootstrap progress
docker exec tor-relay health | jq .bootstrap

# Wait for 100% bootstrap
docker logs tor-relay | grep "Bootstrapped 100%"

Bridge line not available

# Normal for first 24-48 hours
# Check if in bridge mode
docker exec tor-relay grep BridgeRelay /etc/tor/torrc

# Check for obfs4 files
docker exec tor-relay ls -la /var/lib/tor/pt_state/

# Check logs
docker logs tor-relay | grep -i obfs4

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💡 Tips & Best Practices

1. Use health for automation - JSON output is perfect for scripts and monitoring systems

2. Check status during troubleshooting - Human-readable format with emoji makes issues obvious

3. Save your fingerprint - Store it somewhere safe for relay tracking

4. Monitor bootstrap - New relays take 5-15 minutes to fully bootstrap

5. Be patient with bridges - Bridge lines take 24-48 hours to generate

6. Use docker logs - Built-in logging is comprehensive and easier than installing extra tools

7. Keep it simple - This minimal toolset covers 99% of relay operation needs

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📚 Related Documentation

• Deployment Guide - Installation and configuration
• Multi-Mode Guide - Guard, Exit, and Bridge modes
• Backup Guide - Data persistence and recovery
• Performance Guide - Optimization tips

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❓ FAQ

Q: Why only 4 tools instead of 9? A: The v1.1.1 build prioritizes size optimization (~20 MB vs 45+ MB). These 4 tools cover all essential operations. For advanced monitoring, use external tools like Prometheus.

Q: Where are metrics/monitoring endpoints? A: Removed to achieve ultra-small image size. Use health tool with external monitoring systems or check /var/log/tor/notices.log directly.

Q: Can I still use Prometheus? A: Yes! Export logs or use health JSON output with a Prometheus exporter. See MONITORING.md for alternatives.

Q: What happened to the dashboard? A: Removed (required Python/Flask). Use status tool for visual output or build your own dashboard using health JSON.

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Last Updated: November 2025 | Version: 1.1.1