Launch an obsf4 Tor bridge on Fly for free and in under a minute!
obfs4 makes Tor traffic look random, and also prevents censors from finding bridges by Internet scanning.
Fly lets you run up to three small VMs, 3 GB persistent volumes and 100 GB outbound data for free. This setup uses 1 VM, a 1 GB persistent volume and 33 GB outbound data, allowing you to launch up to three bridges while staying within Fly's free tier.
- Install
flyctl. - Create an account with
flyctl auth signupor log in withflyctl auth login.
You will also need jq.
$ EMAIL=your@email.com ./deploy # To specify where in the world to deploy the bridge, see below.
[...]
Run 'CONFIG=bridge-[...]-fly.toml ./show-bridge-line' to display the client configuration.
This will create a new Fly app with a randomised name, generate a Fly configuration file, and deploy the obsf4 Tor bridge.
By default, the bridge will start in Frankfurt, Germany (fra).
To run the bridge somewhere else, pick a region from flyctl platform regions and deploy with REGION=xyz EMAIL=your@email.com ./deploy.
If the deployment succeeded, then a configuration file will have been created. The last line of the output of the deploy script shows you the full path to the configuration file.
$ CONFIG=bridge-[...]-fly.toml ./show-bridge-line
[...]
obfs4 213.188.219.143:63132 280C959B47FBF579CC6852993B83549BC61733DE cert=nH0moM+NS5AKvfFaMCEy4xiCkVeY9drilJ/bWH0lHK8kzpSpr75vrRdcGGvUEBcTinMHDg iat-mode=0
This outputs the client configuration (aka "bridge line").
If you have qrencode installed, then the configuration will be displayed as a QR code.
Test your new bridge by following the instructions for the desktop version or the mobile version of the Tor browser.
Open your Fly dashboard to view logs and metrics and manage your apps.
Note that it takes a few days for your bridge to be picked up by the Tor network. There are good reasons for this, see The lifecycle of a new relay.
This guide is based on the Docker deployment guide for obfs4.