Using Raspberry Pi as TOR Relay with VPN

Question

I am attempting to accomplish multiple outcomes here:

1. Configure a Raspberry Pi (B+ Model) as an XMPP server to utilize ChatSecure
2. Configure a Raspberry Pi (Latest Model, yet to purchase) as a TOR Relay for routing

Should I configure my home PC to route traffic to my TOR Relay and then VPN, and if so, how?

I believe the appropriate steps to ensure all internet traffic via my browser would be:

1. Download OperaTOR (Or your TOR Browser)
2. Install OperaTOR - a TOR client for the Opera browser.
3. Verify that TOR is working correctly using the pre-installed bookmark "Are you using Tor?
4. Start Google Chrome.
5. Using the Tools menus (it looks like a wrench), choose options, "Under the hood". Scroll down to "Network" and click the "Change Proxy Setting" button. Under the "Connections" tab, choose "LAN Setting" - Select Use Proxy server and enter "Localhost" and port 8118.

Source: Super User Question

However I want to ensure ALL traffic (in this case, my concern is P2P downloads) is routed through TOR. This is simple to achieve (I believe) with the use of Anomos, simply enter in the Proxy Address (127.0.0.1:8118) and I believe all traffic will route through the TOR network.

Now of course, without selecting a VPN provider that does not support TOR, it is essentially useless (I believe) and of course adds additional stress/delays to the TOR network.

By using the client I have listed above, I have ensured P2P and HTTP requests go through TOR (and I assume my VPN first).

If employing (I plan on having 3 TOR Relays) with DL and Upload limits applied on my PC, would this negatively affect the TOR community, or would my traffic generally be all local?

Sorry for the poor terminology here guys, I hope you are able to see where I am going with this.

Answer 1

I can't provide a complete answer. On my RPi2 prosody runs quite fine. I am using a sqlite file and auth mechanism 'internal_hashed' to store the jids. With at most 20 users, I noticed only neglectable load. The provided tool for creating selfsigned certs creates certs, that do not work with pidgin atm. Also a typo in the default config regarding the path to the ssl certs, was causing me minimal sweat.

Besides that everything, was real smooth and snappy.

Im guessing you are going to run your RPi xmpp from behind your homerouter? If yes, that would require 3 forwarded ports for prosody. Perhaps you use external components to deliver more functionality and therefor need more ports accesible by the clients.

With your second goal, I need some clarification.

You do install a tool for Opera, but run the Chrome browser at the end. Mayhaps I am ignorant, but this seems not like the way to go. If you just want to verify that tor is running, you could check the logs first.

But in essence you have the right idea.. You need to install/configure socks proxy capable software and configure it to use tor on localhost:8118.

But there is almost no software respecting the configured proxy settings at all. (little overstatement here, also am ignorant and would like to know more software respecting proxy settings)

Mostly they screw up (the software), when asking a DNS to resolve a hostname. The DNS query is often send bypassing the proxy. The solution to this is not trivial. Need to learn more. To check your specific host for 'proxysafeness' you should employ wireshark or an analog.

You could virtualise an os with your tor browser client and filter with iptables on the host machine. Qubes OS does this and more for you.

Also I would advise against using tor for P2P, thats just not ethical behaviour. Better use i2p for that, albeit slower than tor, I like it quite much still. About your traffic affecting the network negativly, you can think like this:

if my uploadrate + downloadrate < 0.5 * tortrafficIamrouting: cant be so bad.

If you shuffle unethical content through the net, though... then the amount isnt that important ;)

As your question is really two questions and each of them concern several topics, we could move further conversations to chat, perhaps over Pi hosted xmpp?