(10 Jul 2020, 03:50 )MindsEye Wrote: How do I make a hidden services node on windows?
I had trouble with this too and just recently finished so the process is still fresh enough in mind.
You can get download retroShare for Windows at
https://retroshare.cc/downloads.html
1.) Make sure to download the version that is Portable and includes a Tor executable. Do not download it to the usual places that Windows installs new programs (i.e. Not under C:/Program Files/ nor C:/Program Files (x86)). I downloaded to my Desktop.
2.) Extract the archive to create a folder.
3.) Go inside the folder and double click on retroshare.exe to start it for the first time -- the first time you do this you may see a dialog box with messages about bootstrapping Tor.
4.) When retroshare finally comes up for the first time, there will be a little box near the upper left saying "Normal Node". Change this to "Hidden node (over Tor)."
5.) Pick and enter a username and a password.
6.) Use the mouse to move the cursor around your screen at least until the bar moving to the right moves far enough to turn green. If you want, you can keep moving the cursor around until the bar reaches 100%. I don't know what difference it makes but it should work as long as the bar is green. Then click on "Go."
7) Click on the little "Preferences icon" near the top of the retroshare window. Click on "Network" along the left side.
8) In the "Network Configuration" tab in the large right side, make sure that the Network mode is set to "Discovery On". Along the far right side, there should be a green little circle with the descriptive text [Hidden mode]. Don't change anything else on this tab.
9) In the right side, click on the Hidden Service Configuration tab. Underneath that, there will appear two tabs. Click on the "Outgoing Manual Tor/I2P" tab if it is not a
eady selected. You should see on the far right, a little green circle next to the text "Tor outgoing Okay." So far so good. Don't change anything on this tab.
10) Select the Incoming tab. Click on the little Test button on the far right. In a few or several seconds, the little circle next to the text "Tor incoming ok" should turn green. If it does, great!
UPDATE: (12/15/2022) The process is now simpler with the most recent version of retroShare. For step 11, the only thing you need to write down is your "Onion Address".
11) There is some important information on this tab that you need to WRITE DOWN. There are two narrow side boxes labeled "Local Address" and "Onion Address". The Local Address value should be grayed out and set to 127.0.0.1 (This is the URL for yourself) The Onion Address will be set to some value consisting of a bunch of letters and numbers that ends with .onion. This is the address of your hidden node on the Tor network. WRITE THIS DOWN. To the right of each of these bars, there will be a little box with some number in it. These are the port numbers used by your local machine and by your hidden node. WRITE DOWN BOTH numbers, one is associated with your local address and other with your Onion address.
12) Inside the retroshare folder, go inside the Data --> tor folder.
UPDATE: Skip step 13
13) open up the file "torrc" with a text editor (e.g. notepad) and enter the following two lines at the bottom of the file.
HiddenServiceDirectory C:/Users/ ... /tor/hidden_service/
HiddenServicePort <OnionPort#> 127.0.0.1:<localPort#>
The part "C:/Users/.../tor/" is the complete path to the current tor folder. "hidden_service" is a subfolder that we are going to create.
The terms <OnionPort#> and <localPort#> should be replaced with the port numbers corresponding to the local and onion address that you wrote down from step 11.
UPDATE: Step 14 may not be necessary but it doesn't hurt to do it.
14) create the "hidden_service" subfolder and go inside it. Create a text file named "hostname" which contains a single line -- the onion address that you wrote down from step 11.
Whew! You're done with the hard part.
15) Now you can quit retroShare and then restart it (by double clicking on the retroshare.exe file again). Now when you log in don't click on the little remember me box -- you can do this on subsequent logins if you wish. You are good to go!
16) Add other people's certifications from this thread! First click on the Home icon on retroShare. You can add a certification as follows
(a) Select and copy a certification text.
(b) On retroshare, click the button "Add friends certificate" that is inside the box containing the text "Did you receive a certificate from a friend?"
© Click the "Paste Certificate" button near the top of the resulting window.
(d) Click the "Next" button near the bottom-right. Then click the "Finish" button.
A window titled Connection Progress will appear. You can safely click on the OK button near the bottom right which will cause the window to disappear while the connection attempt goes on in the background. This can save you from having dozens of windows open when are adding lots of certificates at once.
Repeat this for each certificate you want to add.
It can take a very long time before you start seeing any friends in retroshare. You might have to keep retroshare up for 8 or 24 consecutive hours before you can see anything. If you click on the Files icon and then click on the "Friends files" button, you can see friends and navigate (or search) through the folder/directory structure of the files they are sharing.
Good Luck!
