Install Tor on Raspberry Pi

I will show how I installed and set up Tor on my Raspberry Pi 64-bit for use with Bitcoin and Lightning network.
This is almost a straight copy of the link in the reference, these are just my notes.

If you’re using a 32-bit rpi then install it via apt and skip these instructions.

Prerequisites

• Raspberry Pi OS 64-bit

Install apt-transport-https

$ sudo apt install apt-transport-https

Get the distribution name of your OS, you’re going to need it in the following section.

$ lsb_release -c

Create a new file named tor.list

$ sudo vi /etc/apt/sources.list.d/tor.list

and paste the content below, replacing <DISTRIBUTION> with the value from lsb_release

deb     [signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/tor-archive-keyring.gpg] https://deb.torproject.org/torproject.org <DISTRIBUTION> main
deb-src [signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/tor-archive-keyring.gpg] https://deb.torproject.org/torproject.org <DISTRIBUTION> main

Download the gpg keys to sign the packages

$ sudo wget -qO- https://deb.torproject.org/torproject.org/A3C4F0F979CAA22CDBA8F512EE8CBC9E886DDD89.asc | sudo gpg --dearmor | sudo tee /usr/share/keyrings/tor-archive-keyring.gpg >/dev/null

Update apt

$ sudo apt update

Install tor and tor keyring

$ sudo apt install tor deb.torproject.org-keyring --yes

Tor automatically starts on boot ✔️

Configure Tor

I like configuring Tor for local apps via Cookie Authentication

$ sudo vi /etc/tor/torrc

Add the following lines at the top of the file or edit in place

ControlPort 9051
CookieAuthentication 1
CookieAuthFileGroupReadable 1
DataDirectoryGroupReadable 1

Add users to the tor debian-tor group; only those that are going to be running apps that connect to tor locally, example:

$ sudo usermod -a -G debian-tor sandbox
$ sudo usermod -a -G debian-tor satoshi

Restart if you were using one of those users.

Tor monitoring tool

There are several monitoring tools; the one I installed is nyx, it’s simple.

$ sudo apt install nyx --yes

Run it with:

$ nyx

References

Why and how I can enable Tor Package Repository in Debian?