Set up a Tor-enabled node

To connect to Tor, we use Arti. Arti is an experimental project with incomplete security features. See Arti’s roadmap for more information.

Note: This page is a general guide for tor nodes in the DarkFi ecosystem and is applicable to other apps such as taud and darkfid. We use darkirc as our main example throughout this guide. If you’re using another app, the network configurations remain the same except for the seed nodes (ports) you connect to.

Generating configuration files

After compiling, you can start the application so it can spawn its configuration file.

% ./darkirc

darkirc creates a configuration file darkirc_config.toml by default in ~/.config/darkfi/. You will review and edit this configuration file for your preferred network settings.

Configure network settings

Modify the network settings located in the ~/.config/darkfi directory. This configuration allows your node to send and receive traffic only via Tor.

Note: As you modify the file, if you notice some settings are missing, simply add them. Some settings may be commented-out by default.

Outbound node settings

These outbound node settings for your tor node configuration is only for connecting to the network. You will not advertise an external address.

## connection settings
outbound_peer_discovery_cooloff_time = 60

## Outbound connection slots
outbound_connections = 8

## Whitelisted transports for outbound connections
active_profiles = ["tor"]

## Transports to be mixed
mixed_profiles = []

[net.profiles."tor"]
## Seed nodes to connect to
seeds = [
    "tor://g7fxelebievvpr27w7gt24lflptpw3jeeuvafovgliq5utdst6xyruyd.onion:9601",
    "tor://yvklzjnfmwxhyodhrkpomawjcdvcaushsj6torjz2gyd7e25f3gfunyd.onion:9601",
]

SOCKS5 proxy node settings

If we want to route all our connections through the SOCKS5 proxy provided by Tor, we can add the socks5 and socks5+tls profiles to active_profiles and enable transport mixing by adding tor and tcp+tls to mixed_profiles. Enabling transport mixing helps us connect to tor and tcp+tls endpoints through our SOCKS5 proxy.

When using Whonix, this configuration helps prevent the Tor over Tor issue. Ensure that the tor_socks5_proxy field is correctly set.

Note: With this setup, our node will connect to both Tor and clearnet nodes through the Socks5 proxy.

## Whitelisted transports for outbound connections
active_profiles = ["socks5", "socks5+tls", "tcp+tls", "tor"]
## Transports to be mixed
mixed_profiles = ["tor", "tcp+tls"]
## Tor Socks5 proxy
tor_socks5_proxy = "socks5://127.0.0.1:9050"

If you prefer to connect only to tor nodes, modify the above config like below:

## Whitelisted transports for outbound connections
active_profiles = ["socks5", "tor"]
## Transports to be mixed
mixed_profiles = ["tor"]

Inbound node settings

With these settings your node becomes a Tor inbound node. The inbound settings are optional, but enabling them will increase the strength and reliability of the network.

There are currently two methods of doing this, both documented below. The Arti method allows you to create ephemeral onions that will change each time you restart your node. Alternatively you can make a non-ephemeral service using the torrc method. In this case the address always stays the same, which is useful for nodes such as seed nodes that need to be found on the same onion adddress.

Using Arti

We can use Arti to create an ephemeral onion on each startup that we will receive Inbound connections on. Set this in your config file with a port number of your choice:

inbound = ["tor://127.0.0.1:9601"]

On running your node, you should get a message like this:

[INFO] [P2P] Starting Inbound session #0 on tor://127.0.0.1:9601/

This means your ephemeral onion is active and awaiting connections.

Using torrc

Alternatively, we can set up a static Tor daemon and create a hidden service. The following instructions should work on any Linux system.

First, you must install Tor. It can usually be installed with your package manager. For example on an apt based system we can run:

% apt install tor

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

HiddenServiceDir /var/lib/tor/darkfi_darkirc
HiddenServicePort 9601 127.0.0.1:9601

Then restart Tor:

% /etc/init.d/tor restart

Find the hostname of your hidden service from the directory:

% cat /var/lib/tor/darkfi_darkirc/hostname

Note your .onion address and the ports you used while setting up the hidden service, and add the following settings to your configuration file:

## Inbound connection slots
inbound_connections = 64

[net.profiles."tor"]
## Addresses we want to advertise to peers
external_addrs = ["tor://youraddress.onion:9601"]

## P2P accept addresses
inbound = ["tcp://127.0.0.1:9601"]

Connect and test your node

Run ./darkirc. Welcome to the dark forest.

You can test if your node is configured properly on the network. Use Dnet and the ping-tool to test your node connections. You can view if your node is making inbound and outbound connections.

Troubleshooting

Refer to Network troubleshooting for further troubleshooting resources.