BridgeDB is a collection of backend servers used to distribute Tor Bridges. It currently consists of a webserver with an HTTPS interface, an email responder, and an SQLite database.

Tor Bridges are special Tor relays which are not listed in the public relay directory. They are used to help circumvent censorship by providing users with connections to the public relays in the Tor network.

Tor Bridges are different from normal relays in another important way: they can run what are called Pluggable Transports.

A Pluggable Transport is a program which is pluggable — meaning that it is meant to work with lots of other anonymity and censorship circumvention software, not just Tor — and is a transport — meaning that it transports your internet traffic, usually in a way which makes it look different. For example, Obfsproxy is a Pluggable Transport which disguises your traffic by adding an obfuscating layer of encryption.

Well, probably, you don't. But if you're looking for bridges, you can use BridgeDB's web interface, which has instructions on getting the Pluggable Transports Tor Browser Bundle, as well as instructions for getting extra Bridges.

BridgeDB requires the following OS-level dependencies:

• Python>=2.6
• OpenSSL>=1.0.1e
• SQLite3
• MaxMind GeoIP
• python-setuptools

As well as the following Python dependencies (from ./requirements.txt):

Babel==0.9.6
BeautifulSoup==3.2.1
Mako==0.8.1
MarkupSafe==0.18
Twisted>=13.0.0
argparse>=1.2.1
distribute>=0.6.46
ipaddr>=2.1.10
pyOpenSSL>=0.13
pygeoip>=0.2.6
pygpgme==0.3
recaptcha>=1.0rc1
recaptcha-client>=1.0.6
wsgiref>=0.1.2
zope.interface>=4.0.5

• Install Python 2.6 or later, and other OS-level dependencies. On Debian, you can do:

  sudo apt-get install python openssl sqlite3 tor-geoip
  

• Install Pip 1.3.1 or later. Debian sid has this version, but if you're tracking a different release, the easiest way to install a newer Pip is to use the Pip development teams's getpip script:

  wget https://raw.github.com/pypa/pip/master/contrib/get-pip.py
  sudo python get-pip.py
  

• Use Pip to install virtualenv and virtualenvwrapper:

  sudo pip install --upgrade virtualenv virtualenvwrapper
  

• Configure virtualenvwrapper and create a virtualenv for Bridgedb:

  WORKON_HOME=${HOME}/.virtualenvs
  export WORKON_HOME
  mkdir -p $WORKON_HOME
  source $(which virtualenvwrapper.sh)
  git clone https://git.torproject.org/bridgedb.git && cd bridgedb
  mkvirtualenv -a $PWD -r requirements.txt --unzip-setuptools \
      --setuptools bridgedb
  

  From now on, to use BridgeDB's virtualenv, just do $ workon bridgedb (after sourcing virtualenvwrapper.sh, as before). To exit the virtualenv without exiting the shell, do $ deactivate.

• To run unit tests:

  python setup.py test
  

• To install BridgeDB:

  python setup.py install
  

• To extract all strings from BridgeDB's source:

  python setup.py extract_messages
  

  A .pot file will be created in ./i18n/templates/bridgedb.pot

• Initialise catalogs for each desired language:

  python setup.py init_catalog -l LANG
  

  where LANG is the 2 or 4 letter country-code, eg. 'es'.

• Edit strings in ./i18n/LANG/bridgedb.po, and then convert them to binary format:

  python setup.py compile_catalog
  

  Don't forget to reinstall BridgeDB to update the templates!

  python setup.py install
  

• To generate translation files, and then install them, do:

  python setup.py trans && python setup.py install_data
  

Create a self-signed certificate with:

 openssl req -x509 -new -nodes > cert

Or, place an existing certificate in the path specified in bridgedb.conf by the HTTPS_CERT_FILE option, and a private key where HTTPS_KEY_FILE points to. The defaults are 'cert' and 'privkey.pem', respectively.

To enable Captchas on the webserver interface, set the options in bridgedb.conf:

RECAPTCHA_ENABLED
RECAPTCHA_PUB_KEY
RECAPTCHA_PRIV_KEY

A recaptcha.net account is required.

Add these two options to your bridgedb.conf:

 EMAIL_GPG_SIGNING_ENABLED
 EMAIL_GPG_SIGNING_KEY

The former may be either True or False, and the latter must point to the ascii-armored private key file. The keyfile must not be passphrase protected.

Uncomment or add COUNTRY_BLOCK_FILE to your bridgedb.conf. This file should contain one bridge entry per line, in the format:

fingerprint <bridge fingerprint> country-code <country code>

If the COUNTRY_BLOCK_FILE file is present, bridgedb will filter blocked bridges from the responses it gives to clients requesting bridges.

Make sure that SQLite3 is installed. (You should have installed it already during the setup and installation stage.) To update, do:

sqlite3 path/to/bridgedist.db.sqlite

Enter the following commands at the sqlite> prompt:

CREATE TABLE BlockedBridges ( id INTEGER PRIMARY KEY NOT NULL, hex_key, blocking_country);
CREATE INDEX BlockedBridgesBlockingCountry on BlockedBridges(hex_key);
CREATE TABLE WarnedEmails ( email PRIMARY KEY NOT NULL, when_warned);
CREATE INDEX WarnedEmailsWasWarned on WarnedEmails ( email );
REPLACE INTO Config VALUES ( 'schema-version', 2 );

To run BridgeDB, simply make any necessary changes to bridgedb.conf, and do:

python -m TorBridgeDB -c bridgedb.conf

When you have new lists of bridges, replace the old files and send the process a SIGHUP.

Make sure that the files and directories referred to in bridgedb.conf exist. However, many of them, if not found, will be touched on disk so that attempts to read/write from/to them will not raise excessive errors.

Edit the configuration file value FILE_BUCKETS according to your needs. For example, the following is a possible configuration:

FILE_BUCKETS = { "name1": 10, "name2": 15, "foobar": 3 }

This configuration for buckets would result in 3 files being created for bridge distribution: name1-2010-07-17.brdgs, name2-2010-07-17.brdgs and foobar-2010-07-17.brdgs. The first file would contain 10 bridges from BridgeDB's 'unallocated' pool. The second file would contain 15 bridges from the same pool and the third one similarly 3 bridges. These files can then be handed out to trusted parties via mail or fed to other distribution mechanisms such as twitter.

Just connect to the appropriate port.

Any mail sent to the email port with a subject or a single line exactly equal to "get bridges" will get answered, assuming the domain is okay.

Send your questions to aagbsn@torproject.org.