How to open Tor on port 9050?

Help
1

Hi,
I’ve been following this guide to make tor work on Nixos (I’m using Nixos 20.03).
However, if I put in my configuration.nix:

services.tor.enable = true;

sudo lsof -i -P -n | grep LISTEN doesn’t show port 9050 open.
If I put:

services.tor.enable = true;
services.tor.client.enable = true;

then lsof shows both 9050 and 9063 open:

tor       23406        tor    6u  IPv4 792647      0t0  TCP 127.0.0.1:9050 (LISTEN)
tor       23406        tor    7u  IPv4 792648      0t0  TCP 127.0.0.1:9063 (LISTEN)

Why is that happening? Shouldn’t services.tor.enable open port 9050 and services.tor.client.enable open port 9063? Why do I need both lines?

2

There are cases where one wants to run the tor service but not expose the SOCKS proxy on 9050, for example when only using that tor instance for hosting a hidden service.

The way the wiki article is written seems to be misleading, because it implies that a proxy would always run. Which is contrary to what the docs for services.tor.enable say:

Enable the Tor daemon. By default, the daemon is run without relay, exit, bridge or client connectivity.

3
2 Likes