mastodon tor config

Ok how to serve your mastodon instance over a .onion address as well as clear text.


First install tor via your distros package manager.

For debian based use

apt-get install tor -y

for RHEL based

yum -y install tor


Next this step is optional and you can skip it if you do not wish to have a custom .onion address.


git clone

https://github.com/katmagic/Shallot.git

cd Shallot

./configure && make

./shallot ^foo

where foo is the word you want a custom address for, the more letters it is the longer it will take and i dont recommend anything over 6 letters as 7 letters will take a whole day. But if you need 7 and you have the time dont let me stop you.

When its done it will spit out a private key. Save this in a text file for now.

Next edit your tor config file.

nano /etc/tor/torrc

and add these lines to the bottom

HiddenServiceDir /var/lib/tor/domain.com/
HiddenServicePort 80 xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx:80
HiddenServicePort 443 xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx:443

replace the x'es with your servers IP address and domain.com with your instance domain name.

then save and close the file.

run the following command

service tor restart

or whatever command your distro used to restart a running service.

next
cd /var/lib/tor/domain.com/ replacing domain.com with your instance domain name you selected in the tor config

If you created a private key for a custom .onion address you will want to

nano private_key

and replace the one there with the one you created and saved then run

service tor restart

otherwise if you did not want a custom .onion run

cat hostname

to get your .onion address

Next go to your mastodon instance config for nginx, on my vps its located in /etc/nginx/conf.d but other distros may be different.

Find the area that says

server {
       # redirect from http to https
        listen 80;
        listen [::]:80;
        server_name mastodon.starrevolution.org www.mastodon.starrevolution.org;
        return 301 https://$server_name$request_uri;
}
server {
  listen 443 ssl;
  listen [::]:443 ssl;
  server_name mastodon.starrevolution.org www.mastodon.starrevolution.org;


and change it to

server {
       # redirect from http to https
        listen 80;
        listen [::]:80;
        server_name mastodon.starrevolution.org www.mastodon.starrevolution.org xxxxxxxxx.onion www.xxxxxxxxx.onion;
        return 301 https://$server_name$request_uri;
}
server {
  listen 443 ssl;
  listen [::]:443 ssl;
  server_name mastodon.starrevolution.org www.mastodon.starrevolution.org xxxxxxxxx.onion www.xxxxxxxxx.onion;


Replacing the x;es of course with the .onion address you either created before or the one you discovered via cat hostname and please dont edit your config to match my domain names, leave the ones you have there already im just using mine as an example.

Finally run.

nginx -t

service nginx reload

now open torbrowser and navigate to your new .onion address.

Mine is https://www.starrev3tah2dnhj.onion

You may get a certificate warning, add an exception.