Bitcoin Forum

Hi BTC-T

Is there a easy way to access my Bitcoin core node running on TOR (linux) while away from home?

I hear it's possible over the onion service.  If so, is there a source where a non technical person can follow the steps on how to do this?

Thank in advance!

So you need anything more than a shell or terminal over tor? If not then I'd suggest you start by searching for that (it must be something that's quite common as tor lets you get a static address whereas IP and url don't).

Searching quickly I found this: https://medium.com/@tzhenghao/how-to-ssh-over-tor-onion-service-c6d06194147

If it's too short (or just covers the client or the server setup), there looks like there's a lot more.

Thanks for that I appreciate it.

I should have been a little clearer. Can I use a android device to access the node or is linux/windows/mac-os the only way?

Using SSH Tunneling would allow you to access the terminal of your machine while you are away and that should already fulfill your goal. Take note though, you need to ensure that you are filtering and allowing only specific connections to your server and ensuring that you are using private key based authentication. If configured wrongly, then you would run into multiple security risks.

The alternative would be to use RPC to connect to your Bitcoin node. Same thing applies, sufficient security during authentication and for connection specific permissions. It is possible to use any devices so long as they are able to use SSH.

From a mobile device, you can use termius (https://termius.com/) as an ssh client.

That is not the question, and it's IMO discouraged to run a full node on a smartphone.

For HTTP requests, there's Postman and OkHttp.

This cannot be stressed enough. You are opening up your BTC to the internet once you do this. Making a trivial mistake in you config file later can cause you to loose your coins if it allows others to connect.
Not saying that you should not do it, just be very aware that it would now be out there for people trying to get access.

Testing something 6 months from now, and you change the user / pass to something simple to make life easier and don't change it back not a big deal if it's not publicly accessible. Here, it's a big deal.
That kind of stuff.

-Dave

I wouldn't use RPC for anything other than local applications since it isn't encrypted so you would need to have a tunneling anyways. I'm not aware of any application that currently allows the user to do so because there isn't really a lot of use case for it currently. Using SSH to just establish a direct connection to the server would be better.