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I am attempting to run a full bitcoin-core (v0.13.1) node over the Tor network for the first time. I have set up my /etc/tor/torrc file with the following two lines:

HiddenServiceDir /var/lib/tor/bitcoin_service/
HiddenServicePort 8333 127.0.0.1:8333

I have set up a file ~/.bitseed/bitseed.conf with (not sure this is required)

onion=1

I retrieved my onion address from /var/lib/tor/bitcoin-service/hostname allowing me to set up ~/.bitcoin/bitcoin.conf with settings such as:

onlynet=onion
onion=127.0.0.1:9050
listen=1
bind=127.0.0.1:8333
externalip=<my-onion-address>
seednode=wxvp2d4rspn7tqyu.onion
seednode=bk5ejfe56xakvtkk.onion
seednode=bpdlwholl7rnkrkw.onion
seednode=hhiv5pnxenvbf4am.onion
seednode=4iuf2zac6aq3ndrb.onion
seednode=nkf5e6b7pl4jfd4a.onion
seednode=xqzfakpeuvrobvpj.onion
seednode=tsyvzsqwa2kkf6b2.onion
banscore=10000
bantime=11

It seems to be working as I can see my mempool growing from the debug file, and I have one inbound connection. But my connection count is very small (2 or 3). Is there anything else I need to do? In particular, I wanted to confirm that I have no need to set up my firewall ufw to accept connections on port 8333 (or 9050) in order to achieve inbound connections, and I have no need to redirect port 8333 or 9050 from my router to the fixed local ip address of my machine (setting up ufw to allow 8833 and redirecting port 8333 from router would be required if I was running a normal node).

EDIT: 9 connections of which one inbound, but this single inbound connection is myself. So the question really is: How do I allow inbound connections?

EDIT2: I am now of the opinion that this setting is correct. I was wrong to think a prior inbound connection was to 'myself', after 24 hours I have seen a peek of 4 inbound connections. I can confirm there is no need to tweak ufw or change any of your router settings (the tor protocol is not affected by either of these), and this seems to be working having tor on top of a VPN connection (bitmask). Hence I have no more questions but happy to stand corrected if any of the above is wrong.

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  • 1
    You can answer your own question so others see it's solved.
    – UTF-8
    Dec 23, 2016 at 0:13
  • I d rather leave the slot open to encourage someone who really knows.
    – Sven Williamson
    Dec 23, 2016 at 11:16

1 Answer 1

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Your settings look correct for the versions you would have been using, I do not know about bitseed.conf however.

For a more up to date guide for setting up Bitcoin Core to run over Tor, you can try this question. Bitcoin Core now supports automatically configuring an ephemeral Tor service, for example.

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