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In Securely hosting a Tor hidden service/site, everyone concludes that the best approach is to host the server on a VM with Whonix and full-disk encryption. Thus, the server will be isolated, and if someone manages to get in, they will not be able to reveal your real IP.

I'd like to host a hidden site using a Raspberry Pi, but as far as I know, they have ARM processors and cannot run VirtualBox, for instance. Plus, the system resources of a single board computer are quite limited. On the other hand, I don't want to have my laptop turned on 24/7.

What is the best approach when it comes to hosting a Tor hidden site using a Raspberry Pi?

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    If anyone gets in, they WILL BE ABLE to reveal your IP regardless if it is hosted on VM, Whonix or bare metal.
    – Tomek
    Commented Feb 21, 2020 at 20:14
  • This blog has helped me a lot (not hosted by me).
    – Henry
    Commented Apr 11, 2020 at 12:50
  • Besides Raspberry Pi there exist lot of other single board computer. My favorite by far is the Latte Panda. I came to Latte Panda because I had an eye tracker, that was nearly impossible to configure under Linux. Windows single board PC solved this problem.
    – ScienceLover
    Commented Jan 2, 2022 at 11:46

2 Answers 2

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It's actually quite easy:

  1. Install OS on RPi

  2. Download web server; nginx? (sleek, simple, etc.)

    # apt-get install nginx

  3. Determine IP of RPi

    # ifconfig | grep 'inet addr' | grep -v '127.0.0.1'

  4. Install TOR

    # apt-get install tor

  5. Alterations on tor config

    # nano /etc/tor/torrc

    Search for those two lines:

    HiddenServiceDir /var/lib/tor/hidden_service/

    HiddenServicePort 80 192.168.13.199:80 (where 192... is your local IP)

  6. Create hidden_service directory

# cd /var/lib/tor
# mkdir hidden_service
# chown debian-tor:debian-tor hidden_service
# chmod 0700 hidden_service

  1. Restart TOR to create hostname and keys

    # systemctl restart tor

  2. Check if hostname and keys are there

# ls -l
-rw------- 1 debian-tor debian-tor  23 Jan 29 22:10 hostname
-rw------- 1 debian-tor debian-tor 887 Jan 29 21:42 private_key

  1. Copy and paste hostname into TOR browser

    # cat hostname (will display your individual hostname available on TOR)

  2. Profit!

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Like most things, it's really best to know examine what it is that you want to do with your onion service. Do you want to run a blog? Do you want to run a message board or an image board? Do you expect people do do things on your site besides read?

If you want to just run a blog, then you can do that with just a $5 Raspberry Pi nano. You really need to determine what kind of resources that you need and what kind content that you want to have.

With that said you probably don't need a VM or whonix or anything like that. What is most important is a firm understanding of what an onion service is and how it works. Also, if you very concerned about your anonymity, focus on the simplest website as possible.

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