using a pre-configured hidden service by using --ip and --onion about onionshare HOT 7 CLOSED

I'm open to this. The way I foresee onionshare being used is to just open it to share files up as-needed. It seems like having to setup a hidden service on the tor machine and then running onionshare with --ip and --onion seems cumbersome to use though. I wonder if there's a simpler way, like making it so the machine the user is running onionshare on can communicate to the tor machine to get it to start a new hidden service automatically or something?

Would you want to implement it?

from onionshare.

Would it make sense to connect to the tor control port on the tor machine and start the hidden service there? Or do you specifically not let the browser machine communicate with the tor control port? Then the only problem is figuring out what the .onion domain is, since it won't be on the local filesystem.

from onionshare.

I wonder if there's a simpler way, like making it so the machine the user is
running onionshare on can communicate to the tor machine to get it to start a
new hidden service automatically or something?

That would be great.

Would it make sense to connect to the tor control port on the tor machine and
start the hidden service there?

Yes.

Or do you specifically not let the browser
machine communicate with the tor control port?

No.

(Using Control Port Filter Proxy.)

Then the only problem is figuring
out what the .onion domain is, since it won't be on the local filesystem.

Indeed.

Tor lacks the neccessary feature to support this. There is a number of bug reports:

• https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/6411
• and more https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/8993

By the way, same problem as in ricochet-im/ricochet#30.

Would you want to implement it?

No, unfortunately, I don't speak python / C well enough yet to implement it anytime soon.

from onionshare.

Sorry didn't see that this was already being discussed. Feel free to close my ticket then: #139

from onionshare.

Thanks Micah for being open to my suggestion :)

For example, once the stem bug that's causing #87 is fixed and you can have as many onionshare windows open as you want, sharing as many files as you want with multiple people at the same time, would Whonix users be forced to only have once HS running at a time?

Whonix gateway can support multiple HS run by the Tor client, so sharing with many people can work with our model.

However I definitely see the benefit. How would it work in practice? Maybe there could be an extra flag, like onionshare-gui --transparent-proxy that adds port and .onion fields to the GUI for you to fill in, and leaves the task of starting the HS to you.

Sounds great that should work and is the best solution.

Perhaps this won't work because --local-only listens on 127.0.0.1, and Whonix would need it to listen on 0.0.0.0, so that the Gateway could connect into the Workstation? It would actually be quite a simple patch if this is all that you would need. However, the onionshare UI won't know the .onion address, so the user will have to figure this out and build the final URL themselves.

Thats ok for a workaround atm. For the long term I would really like the first suggestion you made. Multi user sharing is so cool, looking forward to that.

Yes you're right, Onionshare would have to listen on all ports or more specifically the static address assigned internally: 192.168.0.10 -small detail but same concept as 0.0.0.0. I guess we can then document for users how to construct the final URL.

from onionshare.

Sounds good so far, except.

192.168.0.10

Please don't hardcode the IP. The IP will change in Whonix 9, which is due to be released very soon.

Maybe there could be an extra flag, like onionshare-gui --transparent-proxy that adds port and .onion fields to the GUI for you to fill in, and leaves the task of starting the HS to you.

So please have a field to fill out the IP as well. That will also make this mechanism usable for custom and alternative projects (Qubes TorVM; etc.), that are implemented in similar ways.

from onionshare.

I'm going to track this issue as part of #220 now.

from onionshare.