Running Tor relay on personal server: can this hurt?
I would like to install TOR as relay on a hosted personal server. I have loads of bandwidth that I don't use. It's not an exit point. Can this hurt my server somehow? Possible problems I'm thinking of are blacklisting the IP-address, or something similar.
I know that exit points get blacklisted on many servers. So if I'm using Tor as a client, I will probably use a blacklisted IP-address for the outside world, so cannot access those sites.
However, I'm running this on a server, and as a public relay. Could this hurt the functioning of and access to websites on this server?
I could install it as a bridge. I'm a little confused about the difference between bridging and relaying. If I understand correctly the only difference is that a relay is public. Does this mean that bridging only works if I know someone and give them my IP-address?
I'm running a TOR relay on my server since November 2012 and haven't noticed any negative effects yet. At 20 Mbit/s it uses about 60%-80% of one CPU core and, of course, some network traffic. I haven't noticed any problems with blacklisting yet.
Anyway, if it caused any trouble, it would be with outgoing connections - some websites block traffic originating from a TOR relay - not the other way.
I could install it as a bridge. I'm a little confused about the difference between bridging and relaying. If I understand correctly the only difference is that a relay is public. Does this mean that bridging only works if I know someone and give them my IP-address?
This is correct. Relays are public and bridges aren't advertised. So unless you know someone who can't connect to Tor network, running a bridge won't contribute to the network.
I cannot access several websites as my static IP is now blacklisted for operating a tor entry/relay node. There are several blacklists for blocking IPs that are running tor nodes: e.g. https://www.dan.me.uk/dnsbl
Server admins should use the tor exit nodes blacklists, and not all nodes (entry and relay), because harmful traffic would only come from tor exit nodes, and never from a relay-only.