Vanity domain suddenly not working

Question

Before you say it, this is a partial clone of Vanity onion address not working properly, but bear with me.

Until maybe a month ago, I had one vanity onion address, which worked beautifully. About 2 weeks ago I added another vanity address, and both were pointing to the same site and working just fine. I decided to host both sites on the same port to make my life easier in http.conf land.

After struggling with VirtualHosts (Apache configuration is far from my strong suit) I finally had both domains pointing to separate folders with their directories working properly. Then I closed Tor Browser and opened it again to double-check, and my original vanity domain wouldn't resolve.

Keep in mind, the second domain works just fine, and the original domain still has the same configuration. I want to know what troubleshooting steps I should take, considering I can't find a guide for this sort of thing.

Relevant Code

torrc

# This file was generated by Tor; if you edit it, comments will not be preserved
# The old torrc file was renamed to torrc.orig.1 or similar, and Tor will ignore it

DataDirectory C:\Users\[user]\Desktop\Tor Browser\Browser\TorBrowser\Data\Tor
DirReqStatistics 0
GeoIPFile C:\Users\[user]\Desktop\Tor Browser\Browser\TorBrowser\Data\Tor\geoip
GeoIPv6File C:\Users\[user]\Desktop\Tor Browser\Browser\TorBrowser\Data\Tor\geoip6
HiddenServiceDir C:\xampp\onion\[service1]
HiddenServicePort 80 127.0.0.1:80
HiddenServiceDir C:\xampp\onion\[service2]
HiddenServicePort 80 127.0.0.1:80

http.conf

NameVirtualHost *:80

<VirtualHost *:80>
DocumentRoot "C:/xampp/htdocs/"
</VirtualHost>

<VirtualHost *:80>
ServerName [service2].onion
ServerAlias [service2].onion *.[service2].onion
DocumentRoot "C:/xampp/htdocs/sites/[service2].onion/"
</VirtualHost>

<VirtualHost *:80>
ServerName [service1].onion
ServerAlias [service1].onion *.[service1].onion
DocumentRoot "C:/xampp/htdocs/sites/[service1].onion/"
</VirtualHost>

Both services have the original (working) hostname and private_key generated by Scallion.

Answer 1

Propagation. That was the issue.

Propagation is a terrible thing to pinpoint, especially when one site loads and another does not. Simply let Tor Browser sit for 30-60 minutes to ensure that the service is propagated.

Other things that I tried (for future reference):

• Checking that both torrc lines are in the same format.
• Checking that both http.conf lines are in the same format.
• Checking that the server responds to and correctly logs requests.
  • If the requests for the domain aren't being logged, it's likely an issue with Tor.
• Ensuring a reliable connection (connecting to multiple high-uptime sites).
• Wiping and reinstalling Tor Browser Bundle (may have helped).
• Wiping and reinstalling Apache/XAMPP/nginx/IIS/whatever host (I was ready to do this).
• Rewriting the hostname and private_key files for all domains with original generated keys and names.
• Testing with autogenerated names (allow Tor to set up the name and hash for you, then visit the site).