Installing TOR Service
In Ubuntu, you can install both the TOR service and the TOR Browser (launcher). The launcher script is a simpler way to install the browser with all the updates.
sudo apt-get install tor torbrowser-launcher
Since we are hosting a Blog, we can mirror it on TOR
HiddenServiceDir /var/lib/tor/hidden_service/
HiddenServicePort 80 127.0.0.1:80
Once done and restarted, Tor will serve the content that is being served up by lighttpd
. To find your onion address, enter the following:
sudo cat /var/lib/tor/hidden_service/hostname
Going a bit further… TOR works by setting up a SOCKS proxy that process your requests. Since some apps offer less support for SOCKS proxies, a compromise is to use privoxy
as an HTTP proxy that then forwards requests to the TOR SOCKS proxy.
sudo apt-get install privoxy
sudo vi /etc/privoxy/config # uncomment the following
forward-socks5t / 127.0.0.1:9050 .
forward 192.168.*.*/ .
forward 10.*.*.*/ .
forward 127.*.*.*/ .
forward localhost/ .
As a quick test to see if it’s working, you can try the following with various browsers. Good onions would be the one harvested from the hostname
file above, or the TorProject’s offical onion of expyuzz4wqqyqhjn.onion
# Pick the browser you want...
# browser="seamonkey"
# browser="dillo"
browser="lynx"
http_proxy="http://127.0.0.1:8118" \
no_proxy="127.0.0.1" \
$browser \
http://{some_onion}
Keep in mind, beyond the quick test, you really do want to use the TorBrowser for better anonymity and security.