#Running a Blog with blosxom as a Tor hidden service ##Tor + Blosxom = love

Blosxom is a very little blogging application. Being so small and simple it can be easily tweaked to work well as a Tor Hidden service. By well we mean that it must protect the server and client from identity leaks. This is a guide that configures blosxom to run in a dynamic mode and later it will be updated to run in a static mode.

##Example Tor Hidden Service blog A blog with this configuration is running in the wild and may be viewed as a Tor Hidden Service if you have tor installed or by using tor2web if you do not.

##Beat NAT and disregard fascist censorship at the same time! This setup does not require a public IP address for the system running the blogging software. It does not require a domain name. Users that have Tor running on their system will reach the blog without having to worry about DNS censorship or other kinds of traffic analysis.

##Debian suggestions

Install the following package on Debian:

 apt-get install apache2-mpm-worker libapache2-mod-perl2

Make the directories for the content:

 cp hs-blog-dynamic.apache.conf /etc/apache2/sites-available/
 mkdir -p /var/www/hs-blog/blosxom-entries
 mkdir -p /var/www/hs-blog/blosxom-static
 mkdir -p /var/www/hs-blog/blosxom-dynamic
 cp blosxomandtor.png /var/www/hs-blog/blosxom-static/

##Configuring tor as a hidden service The first step is configuring Hidden Serivice and getting apache up (for a detailed guide on how to configure a hidden service See here)

Append the hidden service configuration data to your Tor configuation file and reload Tor:

 cat configs/hs-torrc >> /etc/tor/torrc
 /etc/init.d/tor reload

Place the Apache2 configuration file into the Apache2 available-sites directory:

 mv hs-blog-dynamic.apache.conf /etc/apache2/sites-available/

Enable it:

 a2ensite hs-blog-dynamic.apache.conf
 apachectl reload

##Setting up Blosxom

Place the src/blosxom.cgi into your /var/www/hs-blog/blosxom-dynamic directory:

 mv src/blosxom.cgi /var/www/hs-blog/blosxom-dynamic/
 chown root:www-data /var/www/hs-blog/blosxom-dynamic/blosxom.cgi
 chmod 755 /var/www/hs-blog/blosxom-dynamic/blosxom.cgi

Place the images in the document root:

 mv images/blosxomandtor.png /var/www/hs-blog/blosxom-dynamic/
 mv images/favicon.ico /var/www/hs-blog/blosxom-dynamic/
 chown root:root /var/www/hs-blog/blosxom-dynamic/blosxomandtor.png
 chown root:root /var/www/hs-blog/blosxom-dynamic/favicon.ico
 chmod 755 /var/www/hs-blog/blosxom-dynamic/blosxomandtor.png
 chmod 755 /var/www/hs-blog/blosxom-dynamic/favicon.ico

It should look like the following on the file system:

 -rwxr-xr-x 1 root www-data  17K Dec 22 00:40 blosxom.cgi

If you are running dynamically, I suggest you edit blosxom.cgi and change the the $url value to the following:

  $url = "/blosxom.cgi";

##Editing your first entry: Put your blog entries in /var/www/hs-blog/blosxom-entries/ and ensure that the file names end with .txt or blosxom will not discover them.

##Static rather than dynamic The first step to running a static blog is to ensure you have a place to put the data. We suggest /var/www/hs-blog/blosxom-static/ as a good place.

 mdkir -p /var/www/hs-blog/blosxom-static/
 chown root:your-user /var/www/hs-blog/blosxom-static/
 chmod 775 /var/www/hs-blog/blosxom-static/

Place the images in the static document root:

 mv images/blosxomandtor.png /var/www/hs-blog/blosxom-dynamic/
 mv images/favicon.ico /var/www/hs-blog/blosxom-dynamic/
 chown root:root /var/www/hs-blog/blosxom-dynamic/blosxomandtor.png
 chown root:root /var/www/hs-blog/blosxom-dynamic/favicon.ico
 chmod 755 /var/www/hs-blog/blosxom-dynamic/blosxomandtor.png
 chmod 755 /var/www/hs-blog/blosxom-dynamic/favicon.ico

To run Blosxom statically, use the hs-blog-static.apache.conf in place of the hs-blog-dynamic.apache.conf configuration file. You will need to edit /var/www/hs-blog/blosxom-dynamic/blosxom.cgi to include a password and then you need to run:

 /var/www/hs-blog/blosxom-dynamic/blosxom.cgi -password='YOURPASSWORDGOESHERE'

##Tracking changes with git

Check the entire /var/www/hs-blog/ directory into git:

 cd /var/www/hs-blog/
 git init
 git commit -a -m 'blog setup'

After adding blog entries, add each one to git:

 git commit -a -m 'new blog entry'