Anonymous realtime chat. No JS.

The only external dependency is redis. Make sure you have it running locally on port 6379. You should be able to modify the database using config.ini (which will be generated automatically when you first run the server.)

You must also have libevent-dev installed.

sudo apt-get install libevent-dev

All other dependencies are in requirements.txt.

pip install -r requirements.txt
python nodotjs/server.py staging

You can also change which port the server runs on in config.ini.

OnionChat uses Brubek as a server, so there's no need to proxy, but you'll probably want to use it as an upstart service. Add 'onionchat.conf' to your /etc/init/:

description "OnionChat"
 
start on runlevel [2345]
stop on runlevel [016]
 
respawn
exec /home/www/OnionChat/env/bin/python /home/www/OnionChat/nodotjs/server.py production /home/www/OnionChat/config.ini >> /var/log/onionchat.log 2>&1

(Assuimg you have a deploy user with a 'www' home folder). You'll also have to make sure that your config.ini includes an absolute path to your templates directory.

You'll probably want to consult the tor hidden services deploy guide to set this up.

Then, in your /etc/tor/torrc:

HiddenServiceDir /var/lib/tor/hidden_service/
HiddenServicePort 80 127.0.0.1:7000

And set up your keys and hostname in /var/lib/tor/hidden_service/ .

Make sure that your server doesn't serve 7000 to the outside world! Keep your packages up to date, don't run the process as root, you know the drill.

There is plenty that can be done to improve OnionChat. If you have ideas, please open a ticket to start a discussion, or start working on a previously opened ticket. If you want to get started right now, there is a lot that can be done to improve the mobile experience.

Send pull requests when you have tested your working contributions!

You can also contribute to OnionChat by helping pay to keep the server online. You can send Bitcoin to this address!

1JKvCnFEESTY2TvRsxy8ezisr198pLMDqZ

Your generosity is appreciated!

Read about it at John's blog.