Struggling to connect to onion services

Arti Development
,
1

Hi, I’ve been struggling to connect to onion services specifically using arti_client. I can connect to domains and IP addresses available on the clearnet just fine.

Dependencies:

arti-client = { version = "0.41", features = ["onion-service-client"] }
tokio = { version = "1", features = ["macros"] }
tor-rtcompat = "0.41"
tor-error = "0.41"

Code I am using:

use arti_client::{
    TorClientConfig,
    TorClient,
};
use tokio::io::{AsyncReadExt, AsyncWriteExt};
use tor_error::ErrorReport;

#[tokio::main]
async fn main() {
    let mut config_builder = TorClientConfig::builder();
    config_builder.address_filter().allow_onion_addrs(true);
    let config = config_builder.build().unwrap();
    let tor_client = TorClient::create_bootstrapped(config).await.unwrap();
    println!("Created client");

    // make connection
    {
        let mut stream = tor_client.connect(("example.com", 80)).await.unwrap();

        stream
            .write_all(b"GET / HTTP/1.1\r\nHost: example.com\r\nConnection: close\r\n\r\n")
            .await.unwrap();

        stream.flush().await.unwrap();

        let mut buf = Vec::new();
        stream.read_to_end(&mut buf).await.unwrap();

        println!("{}", String::from_utf8_lossy(&buf));
    }

    println!("Got example.com");

    // try an onion site
    {
        let mut stream = match tor_client
            .connect(("duckduckgogg42xjoc72x3sjasowoarfbgcmvfimaftt6twagswzczad.onion", 80))
            .await {
            Ok(s) => s,
            Err(e) => panic!("{}", e.report()),
        };
        if let Err(e) = stream
            .write_all(b"GET / HTTP/1.1\r\nHost: duckduckgogg42xjoc72x3sjasowoarfbgcmvfimaftt6twagswzczad.onion\r\n\
                Connection: close\r\n")
            .await {
            panic!("{}", e.report());
        };
        if let Err(e) = stream.flush().await {
            panic!("{}", e.report());
        };
        
        let mut buf = Vec::new();
        if let Err(e) = stream.read_to_end(&mut buf).await {
            panic!("{}", e.report());
        };

        println!("{}", String::from_utf8_lossy(&buf));
    }

    println!("Got onion site");
}

I am able to get example.com without problems, but when it gets to trying to connect to duckduckgogg42xjoc72x3sjasowoarfbgcmvfimaftt6twagswzczad.onion, it panics:

error: tor: tor operation timed out: Failed to obtain hidden service circuit to […]zad.onion: Unable to download hidden service descriptor

Debug print is:

Error { detail: ObtainHsCircuit { hsid: HsId([…]zad.onion), cause: Failed(RetryError { doing: "make circuit to hidden service", errors: [(Single(1), IntroductionTimeout { intro_index: IntroPtIndex(9) }, Instant { tv_sec: 15539, tv_nsec: 183277938 }), (Single(2), IntroductionTimeout { intro_index: IntroPtIndex(7) }, Instant { tv_sec: 15540, tv_nsec: 187632683 }), (Single(3), IntroductionTimeout { intro_index: IntroPtIndex(5) }, Instant { tv_sec: 15541, tv_nsec: 219461270 }), (Single(4), IntroductionTimeout { intro_index: IntroPtIndex(2) }, Instant { tv_sec: 15542, tv_nsec: 221975888 }), (Single(5), RendezvousCompletionTimeout { intro_index: IntroPtIndex(0), rend_pt: ed25519:p7… }, Instant { tv_sec: 15543, tv_nsec: 165188671 }), (Single(6), RendezvousCircuitObtain { error: CircTimeout(None) }, Instant { tv_sec: 15544, tv_nsec: 95640953 }), (Single(7), IntroductionTimeout { intro_index: IntroPtIndex(8) }, Instant { tv_sec: 15545, tv_nsec: 272584717 })], n_errors: 7, first_error_at: Some(SystemTime { tv_sec: 1776183479, tv_nsec: 62420130 }) }) } }

I’ve tried various other onion services (that work fine over Tor Browser) and none of them work.

I’ve also tried using TorClientConfig::default() with the same behaviour observed.

Does anyone have an example of using arti_client to make HTTP requests to onion services? It’s only onion services that don’t work for me.

2

Thanks for the report!

We’re investigating. We’re able to repro this from some machines and not others, leading us to initially believe it might just be an overly-aggressive timeout causing this to fail when run from less-than-ideal network connections.

We’ll follow-up soon with more info and/or an issue link.

3

Thank you, appreciated. I’ve done more testing and found inconsistent behaviour too. If I reboot my machine, the behaviour seems to randomly be one of the above:

  • Error originally reported
  • Onion sites hang indefinitely. I’ve left it running for like an hour with no value returned. Connecting to example.com / anything available over clearnet works with Arti, and ofc my internet connection is fine.
  • The attempt to connect to an onion site returns with no error, but nothing read into buf.

In all three of the above cases, connecting to anything available over clearnet (domains, ip addresses, etc) is working as expected. It seems to be just onion sites that I can’t get working. Tor Browser works fine for connecting to onion sites.

My computer seems to cycle randomly between the above three cases upon reboot, though it could just be a case of connecting to the Tor network at different times.

4

Thanks for reporting this! I opened Onion service connections often time out (#2482) · Issues · The Tor Project / Core / Arti · GitLab to track it.

1 Like