How to set up your .onion server

These notes exist because a complete, practical walkthrough was hard to find. Follow the five guides in order and you will have a Linux host publishing a website on a .onion address.

What this site is Free documentation for running your own onion service. The original WordPress site used comments for corrections; this static version keeps the same steps, cleaned up for reading.

The path

Create a .onion service

Install Tor on Ubuntu and enable a hidden service that forwards port 80 to localhost.

Start here 02

Create a .onion address

Optional. Build mkp224o in a Hyper-V Ubuntu VM if you want a vanity hostname.

Read guide 03

Use a custom address

Copy generated keys into Tor’s hidden service directory and restart the daemon.

Read guide 04

Create a web server

Install NGINX, listen only on 127.0.0.1, then add PHP and MySQL if you need them.

Read guide 05

Secure the server

Send host DNS through Tor and apply standard NGINX and access-control hardening.

Read guide

Guide 5 continues with ModSecurity, LEMP hardening, knockd, and the onion service checklist.

What you will need

Each step shows how to obtain these. You do not need everything on day one.

Windows 10 with Hyper‑V

Included with Windows 10. Used in guide 2 to run an Ubuntu desktop VM for vanity address generation.

Linux server (or cloud)

Ubuntu is used throughout. You can reuse the VM from guide 2, or a host on AWS, Azure, or another provider.

Versions in these notes The original write-up used Ubuntu 19.10 and PHP 7.1. Those releases are end-of-life. The procedure is the same on a current Ubuntu LTS; substitute current package names where needed.