Hosting a site on The Dark Web with a Raspberry Pi 3
Apologies for way too much info, but this fix was super important to myself and all the writers on my site. V was cool enough to respond to my email and asked me to post my original question here instead of the old post from 2016.
I want to add some stuff:
I originally followed this youtube tutorial:https://youtu.be/w3-2haLxDuc Don't Do This
I had to update certain commands for the Pi etc, needless to say I had no idea what I was doing. But eventually I got our comedy site up and running. Then I learned that I'd port forwarded it wrong (don't port forward to 80) and elements of my IP were visible to anyone. So after I port forwarded my router to 9050, I rebooted and ssh or sftp would not work. Then I wiped the sd card and installed stretch light.
Here's what I ran into next. This is an email to Pivillion because it was the only place I could find instructions specifically for the Pi on a post from 2016:
I'm trying to host a comedy tor site. I had it running for three days then it all fell apart when I restarted.
After reinstalling Noobs, my torrc doesn't generate the /hidden_services DIR. I've removed the #'s from torrc like in the tutorial and I've tried entering the code in at the bottom of the document before running the program.
Then,I tried running stretch light. which I'd prefer but when I couldn't access hidden services I thought maybe gksu might work on Stretch and reveal hidden services if I ran sudo bash first?. Then Stretch wouldn't install (which later I learned was bc of the touchscreen I was plugged into and the resolution settings). I tried reinstalling Noobs again. No dice on either torrc generating HiddenServiceDir or possibly being able to see HiddenServicesDir as root.
This is the only post I've been able to find about hosting a tor site online. Thank you,
----later
...away from the PI
I opened a text editor and planned all my commands with the 2016 version of this tutorial (who I had emailed before): https://gitlab.com/hacklab01/pivilion/wikis/pivilion-manual-setup and this tutorial:https://learn.adafruit.com/onion-pi/install-tor (I only used her commands to launch Tor and Apache on Boot).
Before setting up a server to host a site on Tor/or anything complex on the Raspberry Pi that's important to you and others, maybe consider configuring some things before you begin (please chime in with any others):
monitor
ssh
wifi or ethernet
port forwarding
Try to be sort of aware of commands you're entering, read some stuff. If like me, you had ran a bunch of commands and installs trying to accomplish something and you feel like it light be shaky, it's probably shaky.
Wipe it. Do it again and do it right.
When I read up on it, configured settings and made a list of commands that I carefully executed, it all worked seamlessly. Our comedy site is up and running.
http://hgrbi76elimpa6db.onion/DarkZuckerberg.html
Anyways, I know how some folks feel about posts like this, but at some point there will be someone who knows nothing and really needs some help. I had people depending on me for this project. Luckily I had a friend who kind enough to point me in the right direction just enough to let me learn it on my own. Also, V's tutorial is great!
Thanks V!
Timothy Pizza editor@timstesseract.com