One-Click-Deploy ORC on Digital Ocean
Today, we are super excited to announce the addition of Onion Routed Cloud to the DigitalOcean Marketplace! This is a huge milestone for our efforts to make ORC more accessible. With minimal technical skill you can now setup ORC in the cloud in less than 5 minutes. Let’s take a look!
First off, you’ll need to sign up for DigitalOcean, which includes some basic contact information and a billing method. Once you are registered and logged into your dashboard, create a new droplet. When prompted to choose an image, select Marketplace, then Onion Routed Cloud 14 on 18.04.
Next, you’ll select a plan. ORC requires 2GB of RAM in order to work properly, so keep in mind you’ll need to choose at least the $10/mo standard droplet. You can choose a plan based on your needs or what you want to contribute to the network. Select any location to host your node, diversity of locations keeps the network resilient to outages!
Before you create your droplet, you need to add a SSH key. This is because your node will not start until you login once to set an encryption passphrase and complete the installation. Secure Shell (SSH) allows you to send commands to a remote computer. If you don’t have a key (or know what one is), follow the instructions for Windows, MacOS, or Linux to create one and add it now by clicking New SSH Key and selecting it by name. Now you can optionally name your droplet and click Create!
You’ll be taken back to the dashboard and will now have a shiny new ORC node! Now let’s complete the setup and set an encryption passphrase. Your droplet will have an IP address assigned. We are going to use a Secure Shell (SSH) to login to our droplet. If you’ve never done this before, don’t worry, it’s easy! Follow the instructions for Windows, MacOS, or Linux using the IP address for your droplet.
You’ll be greeted with a thank you message and a prompt to continue with the setup. Just press Enter and grab a cocktail while ORC is updated and the setup completes. Once the setup is finished, you’ll be prompted to enter a passphrase to encrypt your private key. Be sure to choose a strong passphrase. That’s it, you’re finished!
Now you’ll need to have some patience. Your node can take as long as a few hours depending on the droplet plan your chose. This is because ORC “mines” a network identity (rather it has to solve a difficult math puzzle before other nodes will talk to it). If you are just volunteering a node to join our cause, no worries, you can logout and pat yourself on the back! If you are a journalist and want to use your node remotely from your laptop or phone, finish that cocktail (maybe a few) and come back later.
cat /etc/orc/bridge.tor/hidden_service/hostname
After a while, your node should be accessible via Tor hidden service. Use SSH to login to your node again and determine the unique onion URL. You can now use your password to login to the ORC web application using Tor Browser on Windows, MacOS, Linux, and Android, or Onion Browser on iOS.
Again, we are very excited to be able to provide this simple deployment option for Onion Routed Cloud and hope to continue to grow the network and bring secure and anonymous storage and publishing to journalists and activists around the world. Join our Keybase team to chat with us!
