Radicle x Tor: SOCKS5 Proxy Quick Start Guide

• Radicle x Tor: SOCKS5 Proxy Quick Start Guide
  • Summary
  • Prerequisites
  • Steps
  • Tor Quick Start
    • Edit Your Configuration File
    • How to Get Your .onion Address
    • Common Tor Commands

Summary

This guide aims to simplify the process of setting up a secure and private environment for Radicle users, ensuring that their repositories and communication remain protected behind the Tor network.

Prerequisites

• Ensure Tor is installed on your system
• Ensure you have Radicle installed on your system and an identity created (see Chapter 1 of User Guide)

Steps

1. Configure Tor as a hidden service (see Tor Configuration Details for your operating system) and start Tor (see Tor Commands for your operating system)

2. Stop your node if it's running: rad node stop

3. Build heartwood from source: https://app.radicle.xyz/nodes/seed.radicle.xyz/rad:z3gqcJUoA1n9HaHKufZs5FCSGazv5

   ​​​​​​​ rad clone rad:z3gqcJUoA1n9HaHKufZs5FCSGazv5
   
   ​​​​​​​ cd heartwood
   
   ​​​​​​​ cargo install --path radicle-cli --force --locked --root ~/.radicle
   ​​​​​​​ cargo install --path radicle-node --force --locked --root ~/.radicle
   ​​​​​​​ cargo install --path radicle-remote-helper --force --locked --root ~/.radicle
   

(This step here will be removed in future when this code is added to an official release candidate)

4. Verify the correct version using radicle-node --version. It should be radicle-node pre-release (930f9b0a).

5. Get your .onion address (see How to Get Your .onion Address)

6. Edit your configuration using rad config edit:
   a. Set your externalAddresses to your .onion address with port 8776, e.g.:

   ​​​​  "externalAddresses": [
   ​​​​    "nryicotfm746kfvkoqjgrdffsohhv437m5aqpyv3rq546iddbsit3cid.onion:8776"
   ​​​​  ],
   

   b. Set listen to:

   ​​​​    "listen": [
   ​​​​      "0.0.0.0:8776"
   ​​​​    ],
   

   c. Add the following lines after the externalAddresses field:

   ​​​​  "tor": {
   ​​​​    "mode": "proxy",
   ​​​​    "address": "127.0.0.1:9050"
   ​​​​  },
   

7. Start your node: rad node start and verify that your node is connected to other seed nodes using rad node status.

8. Run rad node config --addresses to output your full external address. This is your {nid}@{externalAddress} and can be shared with other peers who want to connect to you, via rad node connect {nid}@{externalAddress}, such as:

   ​​​​​​​ rad node connect [e-mail]:8776
   

   Note: This sample command above will not work, try it with a real node.

Tor Quick Start

Edit Your Configuration File

Mac

1. In ~/.tor, create a directory called radicle (or a name of your choice), and ensure the permissions are 700

   ​​​​​​​ mkdir -m 700 ~/.tor/radicle
   

This will be the path for the hidden service.

2. Navigate into the folder, run pwd, and copy the output of pwd. This should be something like Users/your-user-name/.tor/radicle

3. Edit your Tor configuration file:

   ​​​vim /usr/local/etc/tor/torrc
   

   The file should include these parameters, with HiddenServiceDir set to the path you copied in step 1:

   ​​​HiddenServiceDir /Users/your-user-name/.tor/radicle
   ​​​HiddenServicePort 8776
   

1. /var/lib/tor/radicle is not owned by this user (debian-tor, 122) but by root (0). Perhaps you are running Tor as the wrong user?

chown -R debian-tor:debian-tor /var/lib/tor/radicle (for ubuntu users getting tor from debian repo)

2. Permissions on directory /var/lib/tor/radicle are too permissive.

chmod 700 /var/lib/tor/radicle

Linux

1. In /var/lib/tor, create a directory called 'radicle' (or a name of your choice). This will be the path for the hidden service (/var/lib/tor/radicle). Make sure the permissions of the directory are 700:

   ​​​​​​​ sudo mkdir -m 700 /var/lib/tor/radicle
   

   Note: if you are a Debian user who got Tor from a Debian repo, you may need to change the ownership of the 'radicle' directory to the debian-tor user and group first:

   ​​​​​​​ sudo chown -R debian-tor:debian-tor /var/lib/tor/radicle
   

2. Edit your Tor configuration file:

   ​​​sudo vim /etc/tor/torrc
   

   The file should look like this, with HiddenServiceDir set to the path above:

   ​​​HiddenServiceDir /var/lib/tor/radicle
   ​​​HiddenServicePort 8776 
   

How to Get Your .onion Address

1. Ensure you have restarted Tor, in case you just made the configuration updates described above (see Tor Commands for your operating system)
2. Run the following command (this is reading the hostname file in the HiddenServiceDir you defined in torrc):
   • Mac: cat ~/.tor/radicle/hostname
   • Linux: sudo cat /var/lib/tor/radicle/hostname

Common Tor Commands

Mac

• brew services restart tor
• brew services start tor
• brew services stop tor

Linux

• sudo systemctl restart tor
• sudo systemctl start tor
• sudo systemctl stop tor
• sudo systemctl status tor (to check the status of the Tor service)