On 17-03-02 11:50:09, Richard Stallman wrote: > [[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider ]]] > [[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies, ]]] > [[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]] > > > As far as I perceive it, ftp.gnu.org and the alpha ftp do not provide > > any access to be used from tor exit nodes. > > This sounds like a real problem. Can someone present a specific test case > that fails?
That's as easy as running tor with a configuration where you exclude at least exit-nodes located in the USA. Then you will try to download any file on one of the download locations of gnu, with a graphical webbrowser - it does not have to be torbrowser - you pass it the arguments to use the socks5 proxy of tor as described in the torproject website documentation, and just trying to establish a connection to ftp.gnu.org will fail with "Error: Bad IP connecting". I have not checked my config in a while, but this shows that there's at least an problem if you connect not from within the USA. I can't recall if I ever had a good exit-node connecting to ftp.gnu.org, but I doubt it. > > I find this annoying every time I have to check releases, update > > software for Guix, etc. If mirroring would be an option I would run an > > .onion mirror. > > Last I heard we had lots of mirrors. Making another kind of mirror > would be useful too. > > -- > Dr Richard Stallman > President, Free Software Foundation (gnu.org, fsf.org) > Internet Hall-of-Famer (internethalloffame.org) > Skype: No way! See stallman.org/skype.html. > Below I use "mirrors" when I refer to the root download architecture at gnu.org, the exception is the provided mirror which should be clear from context. If this (whereby I mean providing .onion access at the root level of software distribution, the gnu.org servers) is not or not right now possible to be provided by the FSF/GNU[0], I strongly consider to provide an .onion mirror with the intention to add .gnu gnunet later on. However there are problems: * I'm not looking really forward to administrate server(s) again, even if the underlying system makes administration easier. * I'm limited in resources both financially and time to invest. * My non-commercial ISP of choice is prepared for lots of traffic, they even have some tor exit- and non-exit relays/nodes in their network, but if this mirror would be used it would be a centralization of service which would be an easy target to take down, in addition to testing out how much traffic is okay for their infrastructure. Last time I ran an tor non-exit relay in there it was still okay with several TB of data per month. I know I can just mirror some (and not all) mirrors of gnu.org, reducing the size which is needed. At the current size of all gnu.org mirrors this results in ~125GiB. Taking in consideration the operation system to add and that at IN-Berlin eV (the ISP) you can only buy disk space in 25 sizes (n times 25) I get less than 20 Euro / month. Now the consideration of the choice of datacenter vs "other places" and therefore the choice of machine in use is how much electricity is wasted in the process. I have to think about compromisses of use vs costs as the ideal solution would be to also provide a service for binary substitutes similar to what's offered from https://hydra.gnu.org at the moment. 0: I'm not sure who's responsible for the server maintenance, I know both parties are involved depending on the level of maintenance.
