Bridgestrap Survival Guide

General information

Scripts and config files related to bridgestrap's deployment are in the bridgestrap-admin repository.
The service runs on bridges.torproject.org.
- The username is bridgestrap.
- Its home directory is in /home/bridgestrap.
- It listens on 127.0.0.1:5001.
Bridgestrap invokes the statically-compiled tor process located at /home/bridgestrap/bin/tor-static. Take a look at this comment for why this is necessary.
Bridgestrap's systemd script is at /home/bridgestrap/.config/systemd/user/bridgestrap.service.
There's a crontab entry (run crontab -e as user bridgestrap) that invokes logrotate once a day to rotate bridgestrap's log files.
You can find the current tor log in /tmp/tor-datadir-...
Take a look at bridgestrap's metrics for a quick check if the service is running.
Bridgestrap is currently deployed and can be accessed at https://bridges.torproject.org/status

(Re)starting bridgestrap

Log into bridges.torproject.org.
Change to the bridgestrap user by running sudo -u bridgestrap -s.
(Re)start the bridgestrap process via its systemd script: systemctl --user [start|stop|status] bridgestrap.
Take a look at bridgestrap's log file at /home/bridgestrap/logs/bridgestrap.log to make sure that the service (re)started successfully.

Deploying a new version

The following script takes as argument a bridgestrap executable and it deploys it on bridges.torproject.org. Replace POLYANTHUM with how you log into bridges.torproject.org.

#!/bin/bash

if [ "$#" -ne 1 ]; then
    echo "Usage: $0 EXECUTABLE"
    exit 1
fi
path="$1"
executable=$(basename "$path")

scp "$path" POLYANTHUM:/tmp
ssh -t POLYANTHUM \
    "chmod 777 /tmp/${executable} && " \
    "sudo -u bridgestrap bash -i -c '" \
      "systemctl --user stop bridgestrap && " \
      "cp /tmp/${executable} /home/bridgestrap/bin/bridgestrap && " \
      "systemctl --user start bridgestrap' && " \
    "rm -f /tmp/${executable}"