Silk Road forums

Support => Technical support => Topic started by: northsouth on May 09, 2012, 08:29 pm

Title: Silkroad 503
Post by: northsouth on May 09, 2012, 08:29 pm
Hello SR community

I'm having a problem that I think is kindof odd. I am on Liberte Linux OS booted from external device, and everything works perfectly, except for accessing Silkroad.
I have the correct url (silkroadvb5piz3r.onion), and TOR works like it should (I can access other .onion sites like the forum, no problem) but silkroad loads and loads and loads, until it eventually times out. I keep refreshing and switching TOR indentity, until after what feels like a gazillion refreshes, BOOM, I get access. And when I get access, there's no problem, SR isn't slow or anything like that.

Once in a while I lose connection and get a 503 timeout again, but a quick TOR identity flush and F5 and it comes back... Until I reboot, and the issue returns. It has been like this for a couple of days, and it only really affects silkroad. It's not really a big deal, it's just annoying (and kinda makes me slightly paranoid).

Anybody else with (or without) Liberte Linux having this issue?

//northsouth

Oh and btw. hi community! I'm new here... Sorta, been a lurker for like 6 months.
Title: Re: Silkroad 503
Post by: Prawl42 on May 09, 2012, 09:56 pm
hello, welcome to the forums.

Im not 100% sure on your issue but librete has known DNS leaks and until this is confirmed to have been patched i suggest you use tails, its a portable bootable OS based on linux that is certified by the TOR project.
Title: Re: Silkroad 503
Post by: northsouth on May 09, 2012, 11:18 pm
My problem is that the first many times I try to connect to SR, after I boot, the connection times out (Loads for a long time, throws me 503 timeout error, I switch TOR identity, press F5, repeat process...).
Suddenly however, after 15-20min it just works. I was thinking maybe it was because SR was overloaded, but it's a pretty consistent problem, and if it doesn't happen for anybody else, that's probably not the issue.

Btw. what are those DNS leaks you are referring to? I couldn't find any information about that. The information I found stated the the Midori browser bundled with Liberte leaks DNS request, but that this isn't a problem in reality, because they are intercepted by the IP firewall.
Title: Re: Silkroad 503
Post by: valhalla on May 12, 2012, 09:03 am
Great you beat me to it. I recently installed Liberte on USB and I get the same issue as you.

It seems to affect any hidden service... SR, SR wiki/community, hidden duckduckgo, but after repeatedly trying and trying again, it finally start working.

And yes - once connected to the hidden service, navigating it is fine! It's just that initial connection that could take me 10/15 minutes of ball-ache.

Normal websites work fine.

I've found no help or other instances of this either!


Also - same question as you re: the DNS issue... I cant find info about it anywhere!
Title: Re: Silkroad 503
Post by: aligibbs on May 12, 2012, 09:20 am
Yes, ditto this problem.

Prawl42 - I never knew that! Thanks...perhaps Tails is the way forward then.
Title: Re: Silkroad 503
Post by: Prawl42 on May 12, 2012, 04:12 pm
no problem mate :)
Title: Re: Silkroad 503
Post by: northsouth on May 13, 2012, 04:14 pm
I havn't been able to resolve the problem, but I'm glad to hear I'm not the only one. I found that rebooting sometimes helps if the issue continues for longer than you have patience for.
Another option I have tried is to use openDNS as my dns servers. It seems to help sometimes, but maybe it's just because reconfiguring the internet options restarts some software or resets some variable and that resolves the problem.
Also, does anybody know if openDNS is safe to use? Or does it somehow compromise my anonymity? I wasn't able to find any information on the subject.

Prawl42, could you please link some info about those DNS leaks? I don't want to recreate my entire setup based on rumours.
Title: Re: Silkroad 503
Post by: Prawl42 on May 13, 2012, 04:27 pm
there was a post on it a few weeks back, use the search function im sure it will be easy to find.
Title: Re: Silkroad 503
Post by: northsouth on May 13, 2012, 05:40 pm
there was a post on it a few weeks back, use the search function im sure it will be easy to find.

I found no proof anywhere on the forum that Liberte Linux should leak dns requests. Only found rumours.

UPDATE: Just found out that Liberte Linux got an update yesterday, and no longer uses the possibly unsafe Midori browser.
Title: Re: Silkroad 503
Post by: Prawl42 on May 13, 2012, 05:52 pm
Well if they say they changed browsers then should be good, but Tails is still tor project approved.
Title: Re: Silkroad 503
Post by: valhalla on May 13, 2012, 10:20 pm
Try the new liberte release! I just installed it and was able to browse first time! I will post back if it was a fluke.
Title: Re: Silkroad 503
Post by: aligibbs on May 14, 2012, 07:55 am
Quote
Try the new liberte release! I just installed it and was able to browse first time! I will post back if it was a fluke.

Yes, please do...for me it often works first time and then stops working. It's a mystery!

Will try the new Liberte update today and report back