Run Tor service on Arch Linux

.

Most of the people are really sensitive on their privacy, and they don’t like to be controlled by governments, peoples, organizations and etc. a group of people may also live in countries that social networks and some websites are locked and they need something to search and download things through the network anonymously with that.

Tor that is abbreviation of Tearing Onion Routing is free and open source software for being anonymous in network, Tor is multiplatform so you can use it on all Gnu/Linux, Windows and Mac for more information you can check here.

There is two cases that you can use Tor, one is that you need to set Bridge for your Tor service because in some countries Tor service may not get ready for using so we need to test some bridges and in other case you just should start this service on Arch Linux, first we should install Tor dependencies so use the following command to install them :

sudo pacman -S tor torsocks obfsproxy

If you want to run your Tor with obfs3 bridge you should edit “Torrc” text file :

sudo nano /etc/tor/torrc

Now that your in file add the following codes below the text :

UseBridges 1
Bridge obfs3 172.245.230.122:51156
ClientTransportPlugin obfs3 exec /usr/bin/obfsproxy --managed

Instead of ( 172.245.230.122:51156 ) you can put any other bridge, for getting bridges you can go here or you can send E-mail to bridges@torproject.org, your E-mail text should be this :

get transport obfs3

By the command below start the Tor service :

sudo systemctl start tor.service

After a while run this command to undrestand if Tor is ready or not :

systemctl status tor.service

If you can find the following code as output of Tor status, Tor is ready :

Bootstrapped 100%: Done

Now Tor should be added in the startup services to be loaded after SystemD started, so use this command and enable Tor service :

sudo systemctl enable tor.service

How to use Tor ?

As I said Tor is not a application and it’s service so you can’t use it like using Hotspot Sheild on Windows, if you want to use it there are diffrents ways such as torify, Foxyproxy, Polipo and etc, for make Linux Terminal and everthing in that anonymouse you can use following command :

torify bash

There is also this command for make firefix anonymous :

torify firefox

Note : Don’t torify firefox because of some security problems that may happen.

The best way for make browsers anonymouse is to use Foxyproxy extiction on the them which you can find it here, for set Tor on Foxyproxy you should know that it’s IP is 127.0.0.1 and it’s port is 9050, Tor is a socks proxy and for download with that you need to turn it’s socks to http to ba able to download, some services that do this for you are :

  • Polipo
  • Proxychains
  • Privoxy

For download and install Tor-Browser which is connected to Tor all the time and it’s security is higher than other ways such as Foxtproxy use the command below :

yaourt -S tor-browser-en 

I wish you enjoyed from the article  🙂