danwin/hostingAutomated Tor-based shared web hosting server with PHP multi-version support, email routing, auto-scaling Tor instances, and built-in security hardening including CSRF protection, CSP, and encrypted onion keys.
This is a setup for a Tor based shared hosting server. It is provided as is and before putting it into production you should make changes according to your needs. This is a work in progress and you should carefully check the commit history for changes before updating. For a production server, at least 1TB of SSD disk space, 32GB RAM and 8 CPU cores is recommended. For a small testing/personal server, 4GB RAM and 1 CPU core is enough.
Translations are managed in Weblate.
If you prefer manually submitting translations, the script update-translations.sh can be used to update the language template and translation files from source.
It will generate the file var/www/locale/hosting.pot which you can then use as basis to create a new language file in var/www/YOUR_LANG_CODE/LC_MESSAGES/hosting.po and edit it with a translation program, such as Poedit.
Once you are done, you can open a pull request, or email me, to include the translation.
The configuration was tested with Debian 13 (Trixie) and Ubuntu 24.04 LTS. It's recommended you install Debian 13 or Ubuntu 24.04 on your server, but with a little tweaking you may also get this working on other distributions and/or versions. If you want to build it on a raspberry pi, please do not use the raspbian images as several things will break. Download an image for your pi model from https://raspi.debian.net/daily-images/ instead.
The easiest way to install is with the automated installer:
apt update && apt install git && git clone https://github.com/DanWin/hosting && cd hosting
./install.sh
The installer handles everything: package installation, PHP/ImageMagick compilation, Tor configuration, MySQL setup, and service provisioning. It will prompt for passwords or generate them automatically.
Options:
./install.sh --non-interactive # Skip prompts, generate random passwords
./install.sh --vanity <prefix> # Generate a vanity .onion address
./install.sh --skip-binaries # Skip compiling (use if already built)
./install.sh --db-pass <pass> # Set hosting MySQL password
./install.sh --pma-pass <pass> # Set phpMyAdmin MySQL password
./install.sh --admin-pass <pass> # Set admin panel password
Vanity .onion generation uses mkp224o (compiled automatically). Only characters a-z and 2-7 are valid. A 4-char prefix takes minutes, 5 chars takes 10-30 minutes, 6+ chars takes hours.
Credentials are saved to /root/hosting-credentials.txt.
cd hosting
./update.sh # Update code, preserve config
./update.sh --rebuild # Also rebuild PHP/ImageMagick
./update.sh --code-only # Only update PHP files
The update script backs up your configuration, pulls the latest code, restores passwords and onion address, and restarts services. It detects if install_binaries.sh changed and warns you to rebuild.
If you prefer to install manually, follow the steps below.
Uninstall packages that may interfere with this setup:
DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive apt purge -y apache2* dnsmasq* eatmydata exim4* imagemagick-6-common mysql-client* mysql-server* nginx* libnginx-mod* php7* resolvconf && systemctl disable systemd-resolved.service && systemctl stop systemd-resolved.service
If you have problems resolving hostnames after this step, temporarily switch to a public nameserver like 1.1.1.1 (from CloudFlare) or 8.8.8.8 (from Google)
rm /etc/resolv.conf && echo "nameserver 1.1.1.1" > /etc/resolv.conf
Add additional repositories (Debian only — Ubuntu has nginx and brotli natively):
apt update && apt install git apt-transport-tor curl lsb-release
curl -sSL https://deb.torproject.org/torproject.org/A3C4F0F979CAA22CDBA8F512EE8CBC9E886DDD89.asc > /etc/apt/trusted.gpg.d/torproject.asc
curl -sSL https://packages.sury.org/nginx/apt.gpg > /etc/apt/trusted.gpg.d/sury.gpg
echo "deb tor://apow7mjfryruh65chtdydfmqfpj5btws7nbocgtaovhvezgccyjazpqd.onion/torproject.org/ `lsb_release -cs` main" >> /etc/apt/sources.list
echo "deb https://packages.sury.org/nginx/ `lsb_release -cs` main" >> /etc/apt/sources.list
apt update && apt upgrade
Install git and clone this repository
apt update && apt install git && git clone https://github.com/DanWin/hosting && cd hosting
Install custom optimized binaries
./install_binaries.sh
Note that debian also has an onion service package archive, so you may want to edit /etc/apt/sources.list to load from there instead:
deb tor://2s4yqjx5ul6okpp3f2gaunr2syex5jgbfpfvhxxbbjwnrsvbk5v3qbid.onion/debian `lsb_release -cs` main
Copy (and modify according to your needs) the site files in var/www to /var/www and the configuration files in etc to /etc after installation has finished. Then restart some services:
systemctl daemon-reload && systemctl restart bind9.service && systemctl restart [email protected]
Replace the default .onion domain with your domain:
sed -i "s/dhosting4xxoydyaivckq7tsmtgi4wfs3flpeyitekkmqwu4v4r46syd.onion/`cat /var/lib/tor/hidden_service/hostname`/g" /etc/postfix/sql/alias.cf /etc/postfix/sender_login_maps /etc/postfix/main.cf /var/www/skel/www/index.hosting.html /var/www/common.php /etc/postfix/canonical /etc/postfix-clearnet/canonical /var/www/html/squirrelmail/config/config.php
For your clearnet domain, you need to add it to relay_domains in /etc/postfix/main.cf and edit the default domain in the following files:
/var/www/common.php
/etc/postfix/canonical
/etc/postfix-clearnet/canonical
This setup has two postfix instances, one for receiving and sending mail to other .onion services and one for rewriting addresses to pass them on to a clearnet facing mail relay. You may or may not want to create the second instance by running
postmulti -e init
postmulti -I postfix-clearnet -e create
postmulti -i clearnet -e enable
postmulti -i clearnet -p start
If you created an instance, uncomment the clearnet relay related config in etc/postfix/main.cf and make sure to copy and modify the configuration files from etc/postfix-clearnet too
If you encountered the following issue: postfix: fatal: chdir(/var/spool/postfix-clearnet): No such file or directory you can just copy the chroot from the default postfix instance like this cd /var/spool/ && cp -a postfix/ postfix-clearnet/
After copying (and modifying) the posfix configuration, you need to create databases out of the mapping files (also each time you update those files):
postalias /etc/aliases
postmap /etc/postfix/canonical /etc/postfix/sender_login_maps /etc/postfix/transport
postmap /etc/postfix-clearnet/canonical /etc/postfix-clearnet/sasl_password /etc/postfix-clearnet/transport #only if you have a second instance
To save temporary files in memory, add the following to /etc/fstab:
tmpfs /tmp tmpfs defaults,noatime 0 0
tmpfs /var/log/nginx tmpfs rw,user,noatime 0 0
To harden the system and hide pids from non-root users, also add the following:
proc /proc proc defaults,hidepid=2 0 0
And add the noatime,usrjquota=aquota.user,jqfmt=vfsv1 options to the /home mountpoint, then initialize quota. Replace /home with /, if you do not have a separate partition:
systemctl daemon-reload
mount -o remount $(findmnt -n -o TARGET --target /home)
quotacheck -cMu $(findmnt -n -o TARGET --target /home)
quotaon $(findmnt -n -o TARGET --target /home)