Frequently, for years, on my Wednesday morning reboot, I find ports that
were perfectly fine in use by "something" such that I've been tracking down
this problem for years (without knowing what I'm doing, of course).
I think, finally, today - I figured it out (maybe).

It's always on a Wednesday on Windows, where I "think" the problem is
Microsoft, after updating, does "something" to a lot of ports (it must be
lot as I've been chasing these ports for years) to lock them up.

I know this isn't scientific, but the reason I'm telling you this
presumption is I don't want other people to go through the hell I've been
going through for years.

The two instant manifestations are the Firefox Tor Browser doesn't work (it
says it want's a bridge) but that doesn't happen every time.

What seems to happen almost every time is Stunnel's ports (like 54321) in
the stunnel.conf file are used by some process that the Microsoft Update
seems to lock up (I can't explain it better than that).

I've already done all the port debugging stuff that I could, so for years I
was just changing ports in Stunnel and deleting and re-installing the
Firefox Tor Browser (don't ask me why that works as I don't know why).

But I just want with this message to warn others in case they are having
their Stunnel/TOR ports being locked up on Wednesdays on Microsoft Windows.

Peter wrote:
> Frequently, for years, on my Wednesday morning reboot, I find ports that
> were perfectly fine in use by "something" such that I've been tracking down
> this problem for years (without knowing what I'm doing, of course).
> I think, finally, today - I figured it out (maybe).
>
> It's always on a Wednesday on Windows, where I "think" the problem is
> Microsoft, after updating, does "something" to a lot of ports (it must be
> lot as I've been chasing these ports for years) to lock them up.
>
> I know this isn't scientific, but the reason I'm telling you this
> presumption is I don't want other people to go through the hell I've been
> going through for years.
>
> The two instant manifestations are the Firefox Tor Browser doesn't work (it
> says it want's a bridge) but that doesn't happen every time.
>
> What seems to happen almost every time is Stunnel's ports (like 54321) in
> the stunnel.conf file are used by some process that the Microsoft Update
> seems to lock up (I can't explain it better than that).
>
> I've already done all the port debugging stuff that I could, so for years I
> was just changing ports in Stunnel and deleting and re-installing the
> Firefox Tor Browser (don't ask me why that works as I don't know why).
>
> But I just want with this message to warn others in case they are having
> their Stunnel/TOR ports being locked up on Wednesdays on Microsoft Windows.
>

Is it Wednesdays following second Tuesdays in the month?
That sounds like what regulars here call "Patch Tuesday".

Or is it every Wednesday?

Ed

Ed Cryer <ed@somewhere.in.the.uk> wrote:
>> But I just want with this message to warn others in case they are having
>> their Stunnel/TOR ports being locked up on Wednesdays on Microsoft Windows.
>>
>
> Is it Wednesdays following second Tuesdays in the month?
> That sounds like what regulars here call "Patch Tuesday".
>
> Or is it every Wednesday?

Good question. I don't know. I will start checking. It happened today
though, and Microsoft updated something because I saw a message that
flashed by with a medium blue (not dark blue, not light blue) screen.

What I found out works most of the time is rebooting after rebooting.

My guess, which is unscientific and may very well be wrong, is that
Microsoft is allocating ports for "something" but it has to be a lot of
ports to constantly hit Stunnel & Firefox Tor so consistently.

I don't change the Tor ports as I have no idea what they are, but I tried
in the first dozen or two dozen times to use a bridge (which is what Tor
said it wanted) until I realized it had nothing to do with bridges.

For Stunnel, I would change the port by one or change it by ten thousand,
and that would work too, but now I think the best solution is to reboot.

For safety's sake, I'll be rebooting twice every Wednesday until I figure
this out, but now after a reboot the Stunnel & Tor problems disappeared.

I wish I understood it - but I don't - but I don't want anyone else to go
through the hell I went through. I'll check specifically, as you suggested,
if it's second Tuesdays too.