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I would like to know what is the procedure for installing a custom onion v3 address into a Tor hidden service. Are there any significant differences when using nginx on Ubuntu?

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  • Can you add more detail to your question? Where did you get this custom onion v3 address from, what format is it in, are you following a guide, and what have you done so far? Your question asked for differences, but you did not give anything to compare it to.
    – Steve
    Mar 22, 2020 at 6:21
  • I've been using mkp224o (github.com/cathugger/mkp224o) and got 3 files: authorized_clients hostname hs_ed25519_public_key hs_ed25519_secret_key. I replaced the files in my hidden service folder (/var/lib/tor/nginx), updated everything accordingly in nginx and rebooted my server but the hidden service doesn't work. It did work before with an v3 address generated by default. My questions is if there is a specific procedure to install the generate files. Thank you in advance.
    – user28868
    Mar 22, 2020 at 19:10

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The procedure is basically brute force name generation. Lets say that I want jsevans... as the beginning of my onion address. I would then generate a bunch of onion names until I get one that matches what I want. Here's the thing, it is an exponentially slow process. Maybe I get one that starts with "j" in the first minute and one that starts with "js" in the first 5 minutes, then "jse" in the first hour, then "jsev" 3 hours later, etc.

There are scripts that can do this for you. How long it takes is dependent on your computer. I probably wouldn't try more than 3-4 letters on something like a Raspberry Pi. Trying to get a completely custom name could literally take years.

This has nothing to do with your web server or your Linux distribution.

You can use this page for suggestions but if you have trouble with his program, put in a request to them directly because this isn't something that sponsored by Tor and is just one person's project.

Edit:

From the link that I posted:

For 21 days, my Raspberry Pi cluster has been running mkp224o in order to generate a vanity address for my new Tor Onion v3 Hidden Service.

It isn't as good as last time, but I have chosen: jamie3vkiwibfiwucd6vxijskbhpjdyajmzeor4mc4i7yopvpo4p7cyd.onion

So that's 21 days to generate 5 letters. Keep that in mind!

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  • I've been using mkp224o (github.com/cathugger/mkp224o) and got 3 files: authorized_clients hostname hs_ed25519_public_key hs_ed25519_secret_key. I replaced the files in my hidden service folder (/var/lib/tor/nginx), updated everything accordingly in nginx and rebooted my server but the hidden service doesn't work. It did work before with an v3 address generated by default. My questions is if there is a specific procedure to install the generate files. Thank you in advance.
    – user28868
    Mar 22, 2020 at 19:05
  • Per my answer, you need to ask the developer that question.
    – elmerjfudd
    Mar 22, 2020 at 19:12
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    Normally what would you do if you want to save your onion address and reuse it? It it only replacing it in the hidden service directory?
    – user28868
    Mar 22, 2020 at 19:19
  • I backup all of /var/lib/tor
    – elmerjfudd
    Mar 22, 2020 at 19:24
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Fixed. In your hidden service file (in my case /var/lib/tor/nginx) do:

chown debian-tor:debian-tor hostname hs_ed25519_public_key hs_ed25519_secret_key

chmod 600 hostname hs_ed25519_public_key hs_ed25519_secret_key

I am not sure if this affected anything but I also kept the authorized_clients folder. Also, I generated the key without any specific optimization parameters like amd64 or donna.

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