Ive spent several months making it my business to be as up to date on opsec as possible and have spent a lot of time reading and researching. With so many guides and instructions written in a very noob unfriendly style as it is assumed you already know certain things before you start it has been a very steep learning curve and i have spent a lot of time learning a lot of things that i didnt really need to know. If only someone could have simply told me what to click on and what to type in.
So I've decided to write out a few "As simple as I can make it" guides.
I've most recently been working on installing Monero in TAILS and connecting through Tor; so that is the first guide ive written. I will also be posting on using installing and running Joinmarket and Veracrypt in TAILS and using Multi-Sig wallets as and when I have the time.
Ive deliberatly left out the detailed explanations of what we are doing with commands etc as it is all very technical and can be rather intimidating for new users (I dont understand all of it myself) I think this puts a lot of people off trying when its actually very easy when you know what to do (you dont NEED to know why).
Using the following guide I have Monero running in TAILS and connecting succesfully through Tor.
Before you start you need to have TAILS with a persistent volume and administrator password set up and 10+gb free space to download the blockchain (I recommend a seperate USB/HDD for this).
Go to getmonero.org/downloads and Download the 32-bit Linux version
Create a folder inside your Persistent Folder, call it Monero and extract the downloaded .tar file into it.
Right click inside the Monero folder and select "open in terminal"
Copy and paste the following into the terminal, hit enter and enter your administrator password when prompted:
sudo iptables -I OUTPUT 2 -p tcp -d 127.0.0.1 -m tcp --dport 18081 -j ACCEPT
- Copy and paste the following into the terminal and hit enter:
DNS_PUBLIC=tcp TORSOCKS_ALLOW_INBOUND=1 torsocks ./monerod --p2p-bind-ip 127.0.0.1 --no-igd --rpc-bind-ip 127.0.0.1 --data-dir /YOUR/DATA/DIRECTORY***
*** Replace "/YOUR/DATA/DIRECTORY" in the command with your actual data directory (Ex: /media/amnesia/1TBExternalDrive/bitmonero) This is where the blockchain will be downloaded.
Note that you will have to change the permission settings on the data directory on the external drive when/if you receive a "permission denied" message after step 5,
to do this:
A. Right click on the bitmonero folder used as the data directory (Ex: /media/amnesia/1TBExternalDrive/bitmonero)
B. Click properties,
C. Click Permissions,
D. Click Change permissions for enclosed files,
E. Set all "files" to "Read and Write"
F. Click change.
You will have to repeat this every time you reboot TAILS as it will not save the changes.
Now repeat step 5.
(You should now be downloading the blockchain. It will take a long time to download, over 48hrs for me)
Right click inside the monero folder (inside your Persistent Folder) and select "open in terminal" again
Copy and paste the following into the terminal and hit enter:
./monero-wallet-cli
- Follow the intructions on screen to set a wallet name, password and language.
And that's it! The wallet will sync with the blockchain as it downloads.
After a very long wait you have a fully synced and functioning Monero Wallet running in TAILS through Tor.
Wow good stuff! Does u/fluffyponyza have any insight on this? Hopefully this will move some people over to the Monero boat! I feel like most of the DNM population still uses tails so this is a nice sight to see. Lack of a personal Monero wallet on tails is partially why I stopped using it.