Tor: Documentation
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Documentation
This website is an online archive and it's outdated!
Some resources you will find here are
outdated.
We are currently working on a
new developer portal
You can find updated and maintained resources about
Tor Browser Manual
User Support
Relay Operations
and
Onion Services
. If you have any questions or need help, please
Getting up to speed on Tor's past,
present, and future
First, read the
overview page
to get a
basic idea of how Tor works, what it's for, and who uses it.
Install Tor Browser
and try it out.
Be sure to read the
list of warnings
about ways you
can screw up your anonymity. Look through the
Tor
Browser Design Document
Our
FAQ
covers all sorts of topics, including questions about setting up a client
or relay, concerns about anonymity attacks, why we didn't build Tor in
other ways, etc.
There's a separate
Abuse FAQ
to answer
common questions from or for relay operators.
The
Tor Legal FAQ
is written by
EFF lawyers, and aims to give you an overview of some of the legal issues
that arise from The Tor Project in the US.
Check out the
Tor
Stack Exchange Q&A Site
, and help us make the questions and
answers better.
The
manual
lists all the possible entries you can put in your
torrc
file
. We also provide a
manual for
the development version of Tor
If you have questions, we have an IRC channel at
#tor on irc.oftc.net
(you can
join via Tor
as well). Developers work
in
#tor-dev
and relay operators
help each other in
#tor-relays
read this fine article by
Tor's Relay Advocate
. If you have a bug, especially a crash bug, read
how to report a Tor bug
first and then tell us as much information about it as you can in
our bugtracker
(If your bug is
with your browser or some other application, please don't put
it in our bugtracker.) The
tor-talk mailing list
can also be useful.
Tor has a blog
We try to keep it updated every week or two with the latest news.
Download and watch Roger's Tor
overview talk from Internet Days in Sweden (
video
slides
),
which provides good background on how Tor works and what it's for.
Learn about our censorship circumvention side: watch our 28C3
talk in December 2011 on how governments have tried to block Tor (
video
slides
),
an
overview
of what to look for in a circumvention tool
and the original "blocking-resistance and
circumvention" talk from 23C3 in December 2006 (
video
slides
abstract
design
paper
).
Learn about the wide diversity of
projects in
the Tor ecosystem
that need your help. Watch the
29c3
video on the Tor software ecosystem
to learn more.
Look through Tor's
Design
Documents
. Notice that we have RFC-style specs to tell you exactly
how Tor is built.
Learn about the
Tor
proposal process for changing our design
, and look over the
existing proposals
Our
sponsor TODO list
starts with a
timeline for external promises — things
our
sponsors
have paid to see done. It also lists many other tasks
and topics we'd like to tackle next.
Once you're up to speed, things will continue to change surprisingly fast.
The
tor-dev mailing list
is where the complex
discussion happens, and the #tor and #tor-dev IRC channels
are where the rest of the discussion happens.
Mailing List Information
Tor runs
many
mailing lists
. New users will be most interested in:
tor-announce
is a low volume list for announcements of new releases and critical
security updates. Everybody should be on this list. There is also
an
RSS
feed
tor-talk
is where a lot of discussion happens, and is where we send
notifications of prerelease versions and release candidates.
tor-relays
list
is for discussions about running, configuring, and handling
your tor relay or bridge. If you currently run a relay or bridge,
or are thinking about doing so, this is the list for you.
tor-onions
is like tor-relays but for
onion
services
tor-dev
is for posting by developers only, and is very low traffic.
Design Documents
The
design document
(published at Usenix Security 2004)
gives our justifications and security analysis for the Tor design:
PDF
and
HTML
versions available.
Thirteen key design changes since the original 2004 paper:
part one
part two
part three
Our preliminary design to make it harder for large firewalls to
prevent access to the Tor network is described in
design of a blocking-resistant anonymity system
PDF draft
and
HTML draft
Want to
help us build it
The
specifications
aim to give
developers enough information to build a compatible version of Tor:
Main Tor specification
Tor
version 3 directory server specification
(and older
version 2
directory
specification)
Tor control protocol
specification
Tor rendezvous specification:
version 2
and
version 3
Tor path selection
specification
Special hostnames in
Tor
Tor's SOCKS support
and extensions
How Tor version numbers
work
In-progress drafts of
new specifications and proposed changes
Neat Links
The
Tor
wiki
provides a plethora of helpful contributions from Tor
users. Check it out!
list of supporting programs you might want to use in association with
Tor
The
Tor detector
tries to guess if you're using Tor or not.
Check out Tor network status information using
Relay Search
Remember that these lists may not be as accurate as what your Tor
client uses, because your client fetches its own directory information and
examines it locally.
Read
these
papers
(especially the ones in boxes) to get up to speed on the field
of anonymous communication systems.
For Developers
Browse the Tor
source repository
Browse the repository's source tree directly
Git and SVN access:
git clone https://git.torproject.org/git/tor
svn checkout https://svn.torproject.org/svn/website/trunk website
Basic instructions for using Git to contribute to Tor software.
Documentation Overview
Install Tor Browser
Tor on Android
Other Tor software
Expert guides
Manuals
Tor Wiki
General FAQ
Abuse FAQ
Trademark FAQ
Tor Legal FAQ
Tor Tip
Tor is written for and supported by people like you.
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