Howto: TOR + Privoxy + Fedora = Secret Happiness [updated]

Posted on 18/01/2009 by Dr. W

If you go to the TOR project website you will find that they only have RPMs for Fedora Core 7. So you are stuck with hoping that these RPMs will work or that you might have to compile from source.
I don’t mind compiling software from source, but sometimes when it comes to security software I prefer using an RPM.

If you are running the latest version of Fedora you just have to install TOR and Privoxy from the repository; and this is how I did it.

1. Start the Terminal and login as root:

$ su -

2. Install TOR and Privoxy using YUM:

# yum -y install tor privoxy

3. Configure Privoxy.
Open the Privoxy config file:

# gedit /etc/privoxy/config

Delete all the text in the config file and Copy/paste the following sample config from the TOR wiki in the config file:

# Tor listens as a SOCKS4a proxy here:
forward-socks4a / 127.0.0.1:9050 .
confdir /etc/privoxy
logdir /var/log/privoxy
# actionsfile standard  # Internal purpose, recommended
actionsfile default.action   # Main actions file
actionsfile user.action      # User customizations
filterfile default.filter

# Don't log interesting things, only startup messages, warnings and errors
logfile logfile
#jarfile jarfile
#debug   0    # show each GET/POST/CONNECT request
debug   4096 # Startup banner and warnings
debug   8192 # Errors - *we highly recommended enabling this*

user-manual /usr/share/doc/privoxy/user-manual
listen-address  127.0.0.1:8118
toggle  1
enable-remote-toggle 0
enable-edit-actions 0
enable-remote-http-toggle 0
buffer-limit 4096

Save and close the config file.

4. Start TOR and Privoxy by starting the Services application (System -> Administration -> Services).
Find TOR and Privoxy in the list; Enable and Start them both.

5. Install Torbutton for Firefox.

6. Click on the Torbutton and check that TOR is working.

Now you should have TOR running with Privoxy on your computer. If you want to highten your security even more with TOR, go the TOR project web site.

Note: This instruction works with Fedora 10, 11 and 12.

Tagged: eee pc, fedora, Freedom, Geek, Hack, howto, linux, Privacy, privoxy, Random, Security, TOR

Posted in: Freedom, Geek, Hack, Privacy, Random, Security

7 Responses “Howto: TOR + Privoxy + Fedora = Secret Happiness [updated]” →

lee

06/02/2009

I using Fedora 10. After installing tor and privoxy, service configuration indicates privoxy service is being refreshed right now. And when my browser tor is enabled, my network is blocked when I tried to go to https://check.torproject.org.

What else I should look at to make it work? My XP works OK.

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xen

06/02/2009

Assuming you did everything in my howto I want you to check a few things.

1.
Open System -> Services, and check if the service TOR and Privoxy is running. Set them both to start on boot.
You should both Enable and Start the services.

Try it now if you have turned both services on. Did it work now?

2.
Double check you have edited the correct file with the correct info under point 3.

That is all I can help you with so far.
To make it work on my Asus Eee Pc under Fedora 10 I did exactly what I wrote in the howto, in hope it would be the same for everyone else. :)

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Vic

20/05/2009

I think the problem Lee ran into is the same I ran into the first time. When I opened up /etc/privoxy/config, there was already some stuff in there, but I went ahead and just pasted your sample file at the bottom since you didn’t say to delete anything. Then privoxy got stuck in “refreshing” for a while, and eventually died. When I deleted the stuff that was in there from before my pasting, everything was happy. It might help to modify your step 3 to indicate that the old contents of the file should be deleted.

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