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Twister and Tor

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This is a howto for setting up twister with Tor.

In short:

  • you need to know your Tor IP
  • a twister version >= 0.9.22

That's it...

easy way

  • probably you have no Tor installed, so:
    • "install" Tor (the easy way):
      • download the Tor Browser bundle
      • extract the archive + start Tor with: ./start-tor-browser
        • (in case you have problems, see here)
      • now a firefox browser will open (leave this open, otherwise your Tor connection stays not open)
      • make sure your Tor is set up correctly by visiting: check.torproject.org
  • now you need to know your TOR ip
    • in the terminal (where you started ./start-tor-browser) you will see some 127.0.0.1 IPs scrolling by (1 Socks listener + 1 Control listener)
      • select the socks listener, which would be something similar to:
        • 127.0.0.1:9150
  • now start your twister-core daemon with the parameter -proxy=127.0.0.1:9150
    • e.g. twisterd -proxy=127.0.0.1:9150 -rpcuser=user -rpcpassword=pwd -rpcallowip=127.0.0.1
      • (the part "-rpcuser=user -rpcpassword=pwd -rpcallowip=127.0.0.1" are your normal parameters you start your twisterd with, so use your own parameters)
      • important: you need twisterd version >= 0.9.22



-proxy=<ip:port> Connect through socks proxy
-socks=<n> Select the version of socks proxy to use (4-5, default: 5)
-tor=<ip:port> Use proxy to reach tor hidden services (default: same as -proxy)

the harder way

  • coming soon
will be basically same, only that we'll show how to install Tor yourself

problems?

takes too long (to load your profile, ...)

this may be the reason:

  • "The premise is that most of people will still be running twister outside TOR, thus with full internet connectivity including UDP.
    These nodes will behave as “DHT proxies” to nodes without UDP, relaying the traffic back and forward." (from here)
    • in layman terms it means:
you need to connect to other twisterd clients with 0.9.22.0 or higher
only those help your own tor-twisterd
e.g. the non-tor-0.9.22-versions help the tor-0.9.22-versions (by relaying the needed data to/from the tor-0.9.22-versions)
    • if you know other 0.9.22 clients' IPs you could add their IPs directly in the network options:
e.g. in twister-html client:
go to menu: Network > Detailed information
"Force connection to peer:"
add that IP

my usual 127.0.0.1 doesn't open in the Tor browser bundle

If you want to use your usual twister-html client inside the firefox browser (from Tor) enable so in the options for your 127.0.0.1, so you can see:

(or http://user:pwd@127.0.0.1:28332 )


todo: the exact menu in the browser where this is will come soon

wasting traffic?

  • my bandwidth stats for 6h[1] show:
    • ca. 80% of my traffic "wasted"[2]
    • details from Twister#bandwidth:
      • download:
        • twister: 99 Mb
        • tor: 551 MB
      • upload:
        • twister: 113 Mb
        • tor: 504 MB
  • noticed in tor browser bundle 4.0.3[3], but also in earlier versions (TBB 3.x)
  • for this test: twister was only running with tor
    • and I am noticing repeating lines like these:
      • [notice] Have tried resolving or connecting to address '[scrubbed]' at 3 different places. Giving up.
      • [notice] Tried for 125 seconds to get a connection to [scrubbed]:28333. Giving up.
      • [notice] We tried for 15 seconds to connect to '[scrubbed]' using exit $<DELETED-by-me> at <IP>. Retrying on a new circuit.
  • comment: "current stats from orig bittorrent code do not account the whole thing (bitcoin side)" (@mfreitas @erkanyuksel)
  • see also: show all traffic stats (in network page)

no connections

  • In case you have no peers/connections/nothing loads:
    • try to add some of your existing peers, like this:
      • 1. your current peers you get with: ./twisterd getpeerinfo
      • 2. and when you start twisterd with proxy: add those in your menu (networ options)

notes

  • bandwidth usage can be seen here
  1. 2015 Feb 20
  2. e.g. for bitmessage this is around 36-39%, see 6h-measurement on 2014-02-22
  3. with Tor v0.2.5.10