Thanks for the prompt reply. In both cases tor simply won't run and the log showed "tor::instance1 s in a crash loop 6 crashes, 0 seconds since last crash"
edit, my torrc
User tor
SOCKSPort 0
RelayBandwidthRate 500 KBytes
RelayBandwidthBurst 1000 KBytes
PublishServerDescriptor 1
ORPort 9001
Nickname
MaxMemInQueues 0
Log notice syslog
ExitRelay 0
ExitPolicy reject :
DirCache 0
DataDirectory /etc/tor/keys #with keys being a link to /mnt/sda1/tor
ContactInfo Random Person
BridgeRelay 0