Hosting anonymous nodes

Using Tor, we can host anonymous nodes as Tor hidden services. To do this, we need to set up our Tor daemon and create a hidden service. The following instructions should work on any Linux system.

1. Install Tor

Tor can usually be installed with your package manager. For example on an apt based system we can run:

# apt install tor

This will install it. Now in /etc/tor/torrc we can set up the hidden service. For hosting an anonymous ircd node, set up the following lines in the file:

HiddenServiceDir /var/lib/tor/darkfi_ircd
HiddenServicePort 25551 127.0.0.1:25551

Then restart Tor:

# /etc/init.d/tor restart

You can grab the hostname of your hidden service from the directory:

# cat /var/lib/tor/darkfi_ircd/hostname

For example purposes, let's assume it's jamie3vkiwibfiwucd6vxijskbhpjdyajmzeor4mc4i7yopvpo4p7cyd.onion.

2. Setup ircd

After compiling ircd, run it once to spawn the config file. Then edit it to contain the following:

inbound = ["tcp://127.0.0.1:25551"]
external_addr = ["tor://jamie3vkiwibfiwucd6vxijskbhpjdyajmzeor4mc4i7yopvpo4p7cyd.onion:25551"]

Now when you start ircd, the hidden service will be announced as a peer and people will be able to connect to it when they discover you as a peer.

These instructions are also applicable to other nodes in the DarkFi ecosystem, e.g. darkfid.