How to set up Tor and Privoxy on Ubuntu Linux at Corvillus

How to set up Tor and Privoxy on Ubuntu Linux

Published September 18th, 2006 in Technology

About Tor

Tor, an innovation of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, is a distributed network of virtual tunnels (you can think of it as a peer to peer network of proxy servers). Essentially data is transferred in encrypted form through multiple servers. It is very useful as a privacy measure because the data is encrypted and it’s very difficult to find the source of the data directly. It also comes in handy for getting around overly restrictive firewall policies (such as the Chinese government firewall, or the firewall my university campus network has) because it can be tunneled over any port you wish.

Overview [Tor]

About Privoxy

Privoxy is basically an HTTP proxy that has the additional feature of hiding all DNS requests. This is simply used on top of Tor to provide that additional layer of privacy (Tor behaves as a SOCKS 4 proxy, and as such browsers can leak requests if it’s used directly instead of going through Privoxy).

What you need

A computer running Ubuntu 6.06 on which you have root privileges
An internet connection

Installation

Open /etc/apt/sources.list as root in your favorite text editor, and add the following line to the end

# Tor deb http://mirror.noreply.org/pub/tor dapper main deb-src http://mirror.noreply.org/pub/tor dapper main

Then, open a terminal, and install the necessary components by executing the following commands:

sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get install tor privoxy tsocks

Configure Privoxy to use Tor

Open /etc/privoxy/config as root in your favorite text editor, and add the following line to the top of the file (don’t forget the dot at the end of the line, it’s important):

forward-socks4a / localhost:9050 .

If you’re using Privoxy for privacy, you might also want to disable logging. To do that comment out the following lines in the file by putting a # before them:

logfile logfile jarfile jarfile

Configure Tor’s ports to use HTTP/HTTPS (useful for getting through firewalls)

Add the following lines to /etc/tor/torrc

ReachableDirAddresses *:80 ReachableORAddresses *:443

Configure tsocks (for quick and easy tunneling of applications on the fly without configuring)

Edit /etc/tsocks.conf and edit the server lines at the bottom to look like this

server = 127.0.0.1 server_type = 4 server_port = 9050

Once you have done that, you can now use tsocks to start applications tunneled like so:

tsocks <command>

You can also start a tunneled subshell like this:

tsocks

Configuring individual applications for Tor

HTTP Proxy: localhost:9118 (this configuration is preferred for privacy but does not work for all applications).

SOCKS 4 Proxy: localhost:9050 (don’t use this if the above works due to the potential for DNS request leakage).

Alternatively, you can use tsocks to start applications that don’t support configuration (also can suffer from DNS leakage).

I hope you enjoyed this post!

This post was submitted to ProBlogger’s ‘how to’ writing project. Make sure to check it out and read the useful ‘how to’ posts others have written.

Linux/BSD/Unix Install Instructions [Tor]

28 Responses to “How to set up Tor and Privoxy on Ubuntu Linux”

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1 Scott Howard Sep 18th, 2006 at 6:14 pm

Ubuntu rocks!!!!! I have a post on my blog about Ubuntu CE if you want to check it out at http://www.dipnoi.org/archives/category/technology/page/2/

Also, I contributed to the Group Writing Project as well, here is my post http://www.dipnoi.org/archives/category/salvation/

Keep up the good work
2 MamaDuck Sep 19th, 2006 at 10:45 am

Oh, what fun. Now if I wasn’t stuck with this Mac…. Our list is up as well if you’d like to check it out!!
3 Jersey Girl Sep 19th, 2006 at 1:22 pm

Wow, it’s like a foreign language to me! I love these writing projects because I see so many things I wouldn’t normally read, and it’s always neat to learn new things.
4 Northern Girl Sep 19th, 2006 at 2:07 pm

I wish I understood more about this stuff…I have a lot of learning to do, I guess.

(Found you through ProBlogger)
5 thackbarth Sep 27th, 2006 at 9:56 am

Didn’t work:

tor
Sep 27 10:55:28.395 [notice] Tor v0.1.0.16. This is experimental software. Do not rely on it for strong anonymity.
Sep 27 10:55:28.396 [warn] config_assign_line(): Unknown option ‘ReachableDirAddresses’. Failing.
Sep 27 10:55:28.396 [err] tor_init(): Reading config failed–see warnings above. For usage, try -h.
6 Corvillus Sep 27th, 2006 at 8:01 pm

That’s an older version of tor. The instructions if followed should give you tor v0.1.1.23, which supports that directive. It was added in Tor 0.1.1.14-alpha, which you don’t have, so you probably should upgrade. If you don’t wish to do that, you could try replacing

ReachableDirAddresses *:80 ReachableORAddresses *:443

with

FascistFirewall 1 FirewallPorts 80,443
7 bigodines Oct 9th, 2006 at 10:40 am

amazing!! it worked perfectly. thank you very much.

cheers
8 Corvillus Oct 10th, 2006 at 12:48 am

I’m glad you found it useful.
9 digital camera Oct 31st, 2006 at 11:59 am

heyas all.
my 40 gig drive is going to good use now. I have installed UBUNTU and have ordered KUBUNTU.
I dont know how to install the driver for my ati radeon 9600xt.
Actually i dont know if i am meant to be downloading and installing XFREE86 or the XORG version of the driver. I am downloading them both but i dont know how to do anything in Linux really.
I dont know where I am meant to set up my modem or set up a net account. (no INETWIZ.EXE)
So yeah, can someone help me out with getting my ATI driver installed?
and does anyone know of a good long PDF file i can read and wrap my brain around.
I’m still a Windows user, but I want to use Linux as much as possible.
Thanks.
10 Corvillus Oct 31st, 2006 at 4:12 pm

I think you need to install xorg-driver-fglrx and change the “Driver” line in /etc/X11/xorg.conf from “ati” to “fglrx”, then restart X. Not 100% sure though, I’d check over at http://ubuntuforums.org/ to make sure.
11 uhuru Oct 31st, 2006 at 6:41 pm

I am trying to install tor, i followed your instruction but I get:

Nov 01 00:39:24.076 [warn] /var/lib/tor is not owned by this user (debian-tor, 112) but by root (0). Perhaps you are running Tor as the wrong user?
Nov 01 00:39:24.076 [warn] Failed to parse/validate config: Couldn’t access/create private data directory “/var/lib/tor”
Nov 01 00:39:24.077 [err] tor_init(): Reading config failed–see warnings above. For usage, try -h.
invoke-rc.d: initscript tor, action “start” failed.
dpkg: errore processando tor (–configure):
il sottoprocesso post-installation script ha restituito un codice di errore 1
Sono occorsi degli errori processando:
tor
E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)
12 Corvillus Oct 31st, 2006 at 10:38 pm

I don’t know if this is the problem or not, but it sounds like you’re not running apt-get as root. Did you prefix the 2 apt-get commands with sudo as listed in the guide? And, do you have privileges to sudo to root?
13 reEz Nov 29th, 2006 at 1:16 pm

helo there…i’m having the same problem with you as my place administrator only allows us to download below that 2mb..it is crazy..i want to figure out how to solve this using torr..i’m using fedora right now..i will changed to ubuntu around this week as i want to try this and i hope corvillus can teach me how to make install this distro in portable(external) harddisk(i need to to this as i can easily go to another place then download some requiredment stuff about torr).Another one i heard there is revolution of torr which is TRUE..how about if i install Nubuntu(the latest distro from ubuntu family)..can you help me to figure out how to set my connection so that i can bypass my local administrator rules and download more than 2mb..really need help..this problem really freak me out..

~AlexanDer reEz~
14 rahmetli Feb 24th, 2007 at 9:44 am

i did all of above except

ReachableDirAddresses *:80
ReachableORAddresses *:443

But i have a question,
for example if i enter the command
tsocks curl http://www.whatismyip.com
or
tsocks nmap -sV -P0 http://www.somedomain.com

will there still be any DNS leakage?
15 Corvillus Feb 24th, 2007 at 6:14 pm

Unfortunately, Tor will have DNS leakage if used on its own. You need to use Privoxy to prevent this.
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17 phone Dec 29th, 2007 at 11:31 pm

“HTTP Proxy: localhost:9118 (this configuration is preferred for privacy but does not work for all applications).”

I thought the default was 8118?

Corvillus