If you want to support the Tor project and you have some bandwidth to share (at least 10 Mbps in both directions, i.e. download and upload) you might consider hosting a Tor (Non-Exit) Relay. There are no legal implications as only fully encrypted Tor traffic is coming in outgoing on your internet connection. It can be done quite easily with a Raspberry Pi (needs at least 2 GB of RAM) or any similar hardware as described below.

Our assumption is that we connect the Raspberry Pi with an ethernet cable to our ISP router, it is running on Manjaro (Minimal version, also called ‚headless‘ i.e. no graphical user interface).

Install Tor

This is straighforward, just install it with:

sudo pacman -Syu tor

then we need to provide the configuration for it (keeping the default file as reference):

sudo mv /etc/tor/torrc /etc/tor/torrc.default
sudo nano /etc/tor/torrc

Our configuration for a Tor Relay will be something similar to:

NickName MyNewTorRelay
ContactInfo myemail@example.org

User            tor
AvoidDiskWrites 1
DataDirectory   /var/lib/tor
Log notice file /var/log/tor/tor.log

ORPort          4020 IPv4Only
ExitRelay       0
SocksPort       0

RelayBandwidthRate  42 Mbit
RelayBandwidthBurst 48 Mbit

The contact information is optional but might be quite handy for others if there should be something strange with the relay. It doesn’t have to be an email address but could be any kind of text.

In case you are running more than just one Tor Relay you have to also include a „MyFamily“ option in the config above and list all your key-fingerprints of your Tor Relays in each of the torrc config files. You get the fingerprint with

sudo -u tor tor –list-fingerprint

and remember that there must be a $ (Dollar-sign) at the beginning of each fingerprint.

Crucial: One might need to create the directories in the config file and make them owned by tor – they should look like:

drwx------  5 tor  tor  4096 Dec 31 09:47 tor

You should check that the syntax of the config file is correct with:

sudo -u tor tor --verify-config

Port Forwarding on ISP Router

In our example the Raspberry Pi (our Tor Relay) sits behind a router which is the gateway into the internet (often provided by the ISP). With the tor configuration above we need to establish port forwarding on this internet router, so TCP traffic coming from the internet (on port 4020) is forwarded to the Tor Relay (on the same ports).

If you would like to use other ports to the outside world (internet) than on the Tor Relay server itself, the Tor config file (torrc) needs to have something like:

ORPort 80 NoListen
ORPort 4020 NoAdvertise

The port forwarding on the ISP router then obviously has to forward port 80 to port 4020 on the Tor Relay.

The ports chosen are kind of arbitrary and we are free to take whatever we like. One advantage of advertising (i.e. using) ports 80 towards the internet is that they are very unlikely to be blocked as they are usually taken for http and https traffic. The drawback is that you can’t use these ports for something else (like a web-presence). Also some routers seem to have issues with port-forwarding these ports (e.g. lost after a router-reboot).

The details on how port forwarding is configured on the internet router depends heavily on that device but usually each of these kind of routers offers this feature somehow (just search the internet in case this is not obvious).

Start and Test it!

First let’s start Tor (so it picks up the latest configuration):

sudo systemctl start tor

Check the logs for what Tor does and if it complains about anything – the following commands might be useful to check for any errors:

sudo systemctl status tor.service
sudo cat /var/log/tor/tor.log
journalctl | grep Tor

You are perfectly fine if you see something like „Self-testing indicates your ORPort is reachable from the outside„. If there are no issues your new Tor Relay will also become visible on the torproject metrics-webpage at metrics.torproject.org/rs.html (this might take a few hours though, so be patient).

One could also increase the level of logging information written by tor. Just change the option in the /etc/tor/torrc configuration file – after the „log“ statement one could place either debug, info, notice, warn, or err. Additionally, one could (temporarily, for debugging) turn off the scrubbing of sensitive information in the log-files as well. So for debugging include something like the following in the torrc

SafeLogging 0
Log info file /var/log/tor/tor.log

Once running fine one should keep the logging at the ’notice‘ level though.

To permanently enable Tor running it needs to be enabled (so it will be started automatically after a reboot):

sudo systemctl enable tor

Also note that it takes up to 2 months until a new Tor Relay gets fully used – and since there is not always traffic available it will mostly never really run at the full possible bandwidth. See this article for some background on it: blog.torproject.org/lifecycle-new-relay.

Backup of Tor’s keys

If you want to be able to continue with the same Relay identity on another server (e.g. when moving servers of the server dies) one needs two key-files:

/var/lib/tor/keys/ed25519_master_id_secret_key
/var/lib/tor/keys/secret_id_key

If you ever set up a new Tor relay just overwrite the automatically generated key with these old ones and you new relay has the same identity as before.

This guide is about how to set up a nextcloud instance running on a Raspberry Pi and providing the cloud service over Tor (a hidden service on the onion-network).

The initial setup of a new Raspberry Pi is always the same and described in some detail here: https://www.spaetzle.info/raspberry-server/

Install Tor

Let’s start with installing the tor package:

sudo apt install tor -y

Save the default config file as reference and create a new one:

sudo mv /etc/tor/torrc /etc/tor/torrc.default
sudo nano /etc/tor/torrc

and past in the following:

Log notice file /var/log/tor/notices.log

ExitPolicy reject *:*

TransPort 127.0.0.1:9040
DNSPort   127.0.0.1:5300

AutomapHostsOnResolve 1
AutomapHostsSuffixes .onion,.exit
VirtualAddrNetworkIPv4 10.42.0.0/16

HiddenServiceDir /var/lib/tor/services/nextcloud
HiddenServicePort  80 127.0.0.1:80
HiddenServicePort 443 127.0.0.1:443

If your running on an SD-Card (not recommended anyhow; if possible rather use a SSD-drive instead) you should add the following line to the config above:

AvoidDiskWrites 1

A crucial step is to manually create the directory for the hidden service:

sudo -u debian-tor mkdir /var/lib/tor/services/

After changing the config one should check the config, then restart the tor service and check the log file for warnings and errors:

sudo -u debian-tor tor --verify-config
sudo systemctl restart tor
cat /var/log/tor/notices.log

Firewall (nftables)

First install the firewall frontend and enable the firewall:

sudo apt install nftables -y
sudo systemctl enable nftables.service

Enable the following firewall rules, starting with a config file in your home directory

nano ~/nftables.conf

and paste in

#!/usr/sbin/nft -f

flush ruleset

table ip filter {
    chain input {
        type filter hook input priority 0; policy drop;

        iifname lo accept

        ct state established,related accept
        ct state invalid drop

        tcp dport ssh ct state new limit rate 10/minute accept
        tcp dport { http, https } ct state new accept

        icmp type echo-request limit rate 1/second accept
    }

    chain forward {
        type filter hook forward priority 0; policy drop;
    }

    chain output {
        type filter hook output priority 0; policy drop;
        oifname lo accept

        ct state established,related accept
        ct state invalid drop

        skuid "debian-tor" accept

        oifname eth0 udp dport ntp accept
        ip daddr 127.0.0.1 counter accept   # not needed ???
        ip daddr { 192.168.178.0/24, 192.168.200.0/24, 255.255.255.255 } accept
    }
}

table ip nat {
    chain input {
        type nat hook input priority 100; policy accept;
    }

    chain output {
        type nat hook output priority -100; policy accept;

        skuid "debian-tor" accept

        udp dport domain redirect to :5300
        ip daddr { 192.168.178.0/24, 192.168.200.0/24 } accept
        tcp flags & (fin | syn | rst | ack) == syn redirect to :9040
    }
}

and activate these firewall rules with

sudo nft -f nftables.conf

In case something goes horribly wrong (e.g. you lock ssh sessions) you can hard reboot the server and will start without the firewall rules.

Note that nft uses its own matching of service names to port numbers – to see the list simply type in:

nft describe tcp dport

Once you’re happy with them working make them permanent with copying them to the standard place (enabled on reboot):

sudo cp /etc/nftables.conf /etc/nftables.conf.default
sudo cp nftables.conf /etc/nftables.conf

Install Nextcloud

Install php

Start by installing php with:

sudo apt install -y apache2 mariadb-server libapache2-mod-php php-gd php-json php-mysql php-curl php-mbstring php-intl php-imagick php-xml php-zip php-apcu

Prepare MySQL (MariaDB)

To initialize the MariaDB database start with:

sudo mariadb_secure_installation

and answer the questions accordingly (e.g. remove anonymous user). Now the database is ready and we create a nextcloud-user in mysql: Log into MariaDB database server with the following command:

sudo mariadb -u root

Then create a database for NextCcoud using the MariaDB command below. This name of the database could be nextcloud (but one can use whatever name is prefered). Note: Don’t leave out the semicolon at the end.

> create database nextcloud;

Then create a new user.

> CREATE USER nextcloud@localhost IDENTIFIED BY 'your-password';

Again, you can use your preferred name for this user. Replace ‚your-password‘ with your preferred password (leave the single quotes in place):

> GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON nextcloud.* TO nextcloud@localhost IDENTIFIED BY 'your-password';

The above command will create the user and grant all privileges. Now flush MariaDB privileges and exit:

> FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
> exit;

Install Nextcloud package

To download the files, first get the download link in a browser (on nextcloud.com, download section, server packages), copy the link and then use the wget command (note that the actual filename will change once new versions of nextcloud will be released):

wget https://download.nextcloud.com/server/releases/nextcloud-x.y.z.zip

and download the checksum (just add „.sha256“ to the above download command):

wget https://download.nextcloud.com/server/releases/nextcloud-x.y.z.zip.sha256

and check it with:

sha256sum -c nextcloud-x.y.z.zip.sha256

and then unzip the downloaded nextcloud package, copy it to the webserver directory and change the ownership:

unzip nextcloud-x.y.z.zip
cp -r nextcloud /var/www
sudo chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www/nextcloud/

Enable the apache webserver

First, lets tell apache to list on which IP addresses and which ports:

sudo nano /etc/apache2/ports.conf

and fill it with something along (but change to your local IP addresses):

Listen 127.0.0.1:80 http
Listen 192.168.200.42:80 http


<IfModule ssl_module>
	Listen 127.0.0.1:443 https
	Listen 192.168.200.42:443 https
</IfModule>

<IfModule mod_gnutls.c>
	Listen 127.0.0.1:443 https
	Listen 192.168.200.42:443 https
</IfModule>

Next we create a config file for our actual nextcloud instance

sudo nano /etc/apache2/sites-available/nextcloud.conf

and paste in:

ServerName abc.mynet

<VirtualHost 127.0.0.1 192.168.200.22>
        ServerName abc.mynet
        ServerAlias h72qy8dg3rhd55rn7u3zkaibw4598dupq544wrlqsmx4d3oxjxvuurad.onion
        DocumentRoot /var/www/nextcloud/
</VirtualHost>


<Directory /var/www/nextcloud/>
  Options +FollowSymlinks
  AllowOverride All

 <IfModule mod_dav.c>
  Dav off
 </IfModule>

 SetEnv HOME /var/www/nextcloud
 SetEnv HTTP_HOME /var/www/nextcloud

</Directory>

To let apache check the config for errors use:

sudo apache2ctl configtest

Finally, enable this new config together with two required apache modules:

sudo a2ensite nextcloud.conf
sudo a2dissite 000-default.conf
sudo a2enmod rewrite
sudo a2enmod headers
sudo a2dismod status

Before actually activating the new config we apply a few more things. First some additional measures to improve anonymity:

sudo nano /etc/apache2/conf-enabled/security.conf

and change it so it shows these two configs:

ServerTokens Prod
ServerSignature Off

Finally activate all changes by restarting apache:

sudo systemctl reload apache2

Fire up nextcloud

Configuration

To connect to the database just point your webbrowser to your new nextcloud server and complete the installation wizard. This also creates the basic config file for nextcloud which we also need to change manually a bit:

sudo nano /var/www/nextcloud/config/config.php

One should add additional so-called trusted domains; here we want to add out onion web-address. To get your new onion address look it up here:

sudo cat /var/lib/tor/services/nextcloud/hostname

so with a few other addional tweaks, part of your config file (not a complete example!) might look like:

  'trusted_domains' => 
  array (
    0 => 'localhost',
    1 => '127.0.0.1',
    2 => '192.168.202.44',
    3 => 'xxx.bet',
    4 => 'h9dfype6yrhd55rn7u3dk7ebwhhkgospq544wrlqsmx4d3oxjxvuur99.onion',
  ),
  'overwrite.cli.url' => 'http://xxx.bet',
  'memcache.local' => '\OC\Memcache\APCu',
'htaccess.RewriteBase' => '/',
  'trashbin_retention_obligation' => 'auto,90',

Php configuration

The php config should be changed to e.g. accept uploads of larger files (note that the php version number might be different):

sudo nano /etc/php/7.3/apache2/php.ini

and change (search for the options in this very lengthy config file):

memory_limit = 512M
post_max_size = 256M
upload_max_filesize = 256M

crontab

You might improve a bit on the nextcloud performance by using cron:

sudo crontab -u www-data -e

and add at the very bottom:

*/15  *  *  *  * /usr/bin/php -f /var/www/nextcloud/cron.php

Finally, log into nextcloud and on the admin panel enable cron.

Update Nextcloud

Although there is a possibility to update your Nextcloud instance via the web frontend this might be failing in same cases due to time-outs. The safer approach is to simply run:

cd /var/www/nextcloud/updater
sudo -u www-data php ./updater.phar

on the command line interface of your machine.