Setup Tor Hidden Service on CentOS 7

Tor is provided by EPEL repository on CentOS 7. Install EPEL repo with command

yum install epel-release

Install tor

yum install tor

Edit tor config file

vi /etc/tor/torrc

Uncomment or add following lines

HiddenServiceDir /var/lib/tor/hidden_service/
HiddenServicePort 80 127.0.0.1:80

Restart tor with command

systemctl restart tor

Now your tor hidden service is ready to use. You need to run your web application on 127.0.0.1:80

To see URL of your tor hidden service, run

cat /var/lib/tor/hidden_service/hostname

Make sure to make a backup of folder “/var/lib/tor/hidden_service/” as it comtains keys for this .onion domain. If you lost it, you will lose your domain name. So it is very important you keep the files safe.

To stop/start tor, run

systemctl stop tor
systemctl start tor

See tor