I will continue thread from here and the mailing list from here
Without ORPORT exposed to the internet i got this
11:49:55 [WARN] Your server has not managed to confirm reachability for its ORPort(s) at XXX:2024. Relays do not publish descriptors until their ORPort and DirPort are reachable. Please check your firewalls, ports, address,
/etc/hosts file, etc.
Yes, the tor daemon expect to have the ORPort reachable and will give an error if is not. You can add AssumeReachable 1 to your torrc so it will assume the ORPort is reachable, will skip this check and publish the bridge descriptor. Doing that you can run a bridge without publishing the ORPort.
Thanks, I will do that right away because my feeling is that censors discovery my bridge using the vanilla port (ORport) and ban the entire class so obfs4 becomes obsolete