I am currently running ~35+ relays across multiple providers. I just set up a new VPS on a provider that I have used before. This VPS is running 24 relays across 24 “CPUs”. This is the first time I have needed multiple IPs for a single VPS because of the 8 relays per IP rule. Now, on to the issue I am experiencing: 16 of my 24 relays have been hit with the “StaleDesc” flag. I have never seen this flag before on any of my other relays. It just happens that those 16 of the 24 relays are all on 2 of the IPs and the 8 relays that don’t have the flag are ALL on the 3rd IP.
I must have configured something wrong. The torrc look consistent across all 24 relays except for the “Address” and “OutboundBindAddress” being set to the corresponding IP. Given as this is the first time I have had to deal with multiple IPs per VPS, I am sure I missed a configuration somewhere. Any advice/assistance would be greatly appreciated!
The torrc look consistent across all 24 relays except for the “Address” and “OutboundBindAddress” being set to the corresponding IP.
On Ubuntu, when running multiple relays with multiple public IP addresses, I set the IP address 3 times in each relay torrc:
ORPort 204.204.204.204:443
Address 204.204.204.204
OutboundBindAddress 204.204.204.204
Assuming everything is setup properly, no firewall interring, no upstream blocking of traffic, CPU and RAM are sufficient on the host, etc. for the StaleDesc flag, I have rarely seen this across ~300+ relays the last few months. The rare occasion I’ve seen this it often resolves on it’s own within 24-48 hours, which seems to be due to some relay not making a successful connection with some directory authority.
I haven’t seen the issue persist longer than 24-48 hours. If I want to fix the issue quickly, I restart the relay and it usually clears up quicker.
The problem ended up that my IP routes were not set up properly and so only the last IP, which was the last one setup, was working. Everything else was following that path as well and therefore TOR couldn’t hit it.