TorBox does not work after restart about torbox

[FranklinClinton]

Sitting tight until a new image has been released and looking forward to test it! Will report back after that.

[FranklinClinton]

New image works like a charm! Great success! Thanks a lot

[radio24]

I guess rc.local stops in the middle because of an error. Please try the following (updating rc.local):

• Update the TorBox menu with entry 5 in the Update and Maintenance sub-menu.
• Quit the TorBox menu (press ESC until entering the terminal).
• Use the following command to update rc.local:
• • sudo cp etc/rc.local /etc
• Restart TorBox

If this doesn't work, try the following (replacing rc.local with version 0.5.3):

• Quit the TorBox menu (press ESC until entering the terminal).
• Use the following commands:
• • cd
• • wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/radio24/TorBox/torbox-v.0.5.3/etc/rc.local
• • sudo cp rc.local /etc
• Restart TorBox

If this doesn't work, try the following (adding dhclient eth to rc.local - see also here):

• Quit the TorBox menu (press ESC until entering the terminal).
• Use the following command to edit rc.local:
• • sudo nano /etc/rc.local
• Go to the end of the file and put before exit 0 the command dhclient eth into the file. Save with CTRL-W and exit with CTRL-X.
• Restart TorBox

I would appreciate your feedback which of these three solutions worked for you so I can take it into account for the upcoming release.

[FranklinClinton]

Thanks for the fast response! I tried the 3 options:
Option 1: Did not help
Option 2: Kinda helped, it now gets an IP right after it booted and connects to the tor network successfully. I am able to ping the torbox, accessing the web interface of torbox from the PC fails with 502 Bad Gateway. Internet access is not possible. When I go into the menu via local console it shows the arrow on the menu entry I usually use (internet over eth0). So it kinda detected that. Then I hit thst menu entry and after a couple of seconds the internet access works on the PC through Tor.
Bad Gateway for the web interface stays the same though.
Option 3: Haven’t tried because it already gets an IP Address now and this is no longer the problem. Let me know if I should to it nonetheless.

to summarize: Option 2 enables torbox to get an IP after boot. That is good. Internet access is still not working and the web interface is broken (don’t know when the web interface broke, maybe it already broke during option 1)

[FranklinClinton]

So I tried a bunch of stuff and I found the following thing quite interesting:
After a reboot the PC is not able to access the internet through the TorBox. When I execute this command:
iptables-restore < /etc/iptables.ipv4.nat

Internet access starts working. I will add this to rc.local, but I feel like this is a bug or something

Edit:

It’s already in the rc.local. I tried adding a sleep 10 before and after the command, I also tried exit 0 right after the command. Nothing seems to help.

Edit2:
I took a look right after boot at the iptables by running iptables -L. They are empty! Then I restore them, run the command again and see lots of rules.

[radio24]

Thank you for your detailed information. You are on the right track: the problem lies in the rc.local. It also means you can forget my option 3 because the problem in Issue #221 is different.

Dealing with rc.local is a pain in the ass because if there is an error message during the execution of this file, the execution is stopped at this point, and the rest of the commands are not executed anymore. In your case, the error occurs most probably somewhere before the line sudo /sbin/iptables-restore < /etc/iptables.ipv4.nat.

With option 2 it was possible to isolate the problem. However, the rc.local from option 2 was written for TorBox v.0.5.3 which is a little bit different. In other words, we have to make some changes in that rc.local:

Old: bash /home/torbox/torbox/bin/regset
New: #bash /home/torbox/torbox/bin/regset

Old: if grep "^TFS-" /home/torbox/torbox/run/torbox.run ; then sudo /home/torbox/torbox/bin/start_tfs initial ; fi
New: if grep "^TFS-" /home/torbox/torbox/run/torbox.run ; then sudo /home/torbox/torbox/run/start_tfs initial ; fi

Old: if grep "^TCS-" /home/torbox/torbox/run/torbox.run ; then sudo /home/torbox/torbox/bin/start_tcs initial ; fi
New: if grep "^TCS-" /home/torbox/torbox/run/torbox.run ; then sudo /home/torbox/torbox/run/start_tcs initial ; fi

Also, rc.local is using ipset because of a domain exclusion feature, which I added later to TorBox v.0.5.2 (probably that wasn't a good idea and caused the problems with rc.local in the first place). To fix that, please install ipset with the following command: sudo apt-get install ipset.

If this will not fix the issue, try to execute the command sudo /etc/rc.local in the terminal and look out for error messages (or post the output here again).

[FranklinClinton]

I’ve gone the way of running sudo /etc/rc.local First to see any error. Haven’t thought about that earlier.

I commented bash /home/torbox/torbox/bin/regset out by placing a # before the line and executed the rc file again. Now without any errors!
Rebooted, but still couldn’t access internet through torbox.

Then I fixed the if statements and installed ipset. Rebooted aaaaaaand, let’s see…
It does not work.

Restarting tor doesn’t lead to 100% bootstrapped. It’s stuck on 0%. The pi has a valid IP on eth0 and is able to access the internet though.

Running rc.local manually again. No errors. No behavior change.

Running the menu again, choosing 5 to set eth0 as source. Menu didn’t show the arrow on the side of the option.

Internet access still doesn’t work.
Man this stuff feels rough.

[radio24]

Ok, that's a setback. :-(
However, it seems to be another problem --> missing flash.

The flash is based on the following check:
sudo timeout 5 sudo route | grep -m 1 default | tr -s " " | cut -d " " -f8

You don't have a valid route if the router doesn't give you an IP (via DHCP). Because these IPs have time to live (TTL) settings in the DHCP server, it is possible that you have manually to release the old IP (dhclient -r or dhclient -r eth) and/or to request a new one (dhclient eth). This is Issue #221.

Sometimes, when I do tests with a TorBox on my Internet router and have to restart TorBox several times, the router fails to give me a new IP which results in waiting until the TTL is over or restarting the router.

[FranklinClinton]

I’ve checked that the TorBox has a valid IP. It can reach 8.8.8.8 when I am using the local console on it. That does not seem to be the problem. Unfortunately.

[radio24]

What is the output of sudo route?
What happens, if you use iptables-restore < /etc/iptables.ipv4.nat?

[FranklinClinton]

Let me give you the current status:

Starting Pi

• Accessing menu via direct console
• Tor is not working according to the menu
• Option 5 (eth0) does not show an arrow
  Quitting the menu to gather some info:
• ifconfig shows a valid IP for eth0 and also for wlan0
• route -n shows two routes, one for each subnet (eth0 and wlan0). It does not show a route for 0.0.0.0 though, but I am unsure if this is by design or if this is an error.
• iptables -L shows a lot of rules
• ping to 8.8.8.8 fails - “Network is unreachable” - maybe because of the missing default route

Accessing the menu again

• Choosing option 5, yes, open access
• iptables are being set up
• Menu shows “tor is working”
• testing internet access from PC through TorBox
• No luck

Rebooting

• Adding default route manually on torbox “ip route add default via %gateway IP reachable from eth0%”
• pinging 8.8.8.8 now works from direct console on TorBox
• Accessing menu, choosing 5
• PC can successfully access internet through TorBox!
• Restarting the TorBox results in loss of the default route and therefor requires the same steps each time

[radio24]

sudo route should output something like that:

Kernel IP routing table
Destination      Gateway         Genmask             Flags Metric Ref    Use  Iface
default          hostxy          0.0.0.0             UG    0      0      0    eth0
192.168.42.0     0.0.0.0         255.255.255.0       U     0      0      0    wlan0
212.x.x.x        0.0.0.0         255.255.255.0       U     0      0      0    eth0

No arrow will be shown if the default line is missing.
Even if the default route is set manually, your Internet router should provide a route via DHCP.

Let's summarize my thoughts:

• At the beginning of the thread, the route was not an issue. We changed the rc.local, which doesn't affect the route. In my opinion, the route problem is unrelated to the initial issue. I guess it has to do with your router (DHCP server). If the route is missing, tor will be stuck in the low percentage.
• webssh should work now because the malfunction was related to a broken rc.local. Alternatively, Termius would be a good SSH client, too.
• The problem with the failed up-state of the TorBox after booting is related to iptables-restore < /etc/iptables.ipv4.nat, which was not executed because of a failing rc.local.

At this point, I don't know how to help you further to get your default gateway from your router.

[FranklinClinton]

The missing default route is not a problem on other devices that are running windows, Ubuntu and even MacOS. Since the route was there in the beginning (otherwise I couldn’t have installed ipset), I assume it has been destroyed by our troubleshooting and tempering.

Since we found a lot of bugs and you could implement those fixes, when would 0.5.3 be available? I could then reflash and see where we go from there. Maybe that version will work out of the box.

[radio24]

I'm still fixing some bugs that pop up during the test phase. If all works according to my plans, the image should be out this weekend, latest coming Monday.

If you want to try it before, you can install it from the Github repository using this manual: https://www.torbox.ch/?page_id=1168#script

The recommended command for the script is the following (as long as the branche torbox-v.0.5.3 is not merged into master):
run_install.sh --select-branch torbox-v.0.5.3 --step_by_step

[radio24]

News to report!

As I mentioned before: Sometimes, when I do tests with a TorBox on my Internet router and have to restart TorBox several times, the router fails to give me a new IP (or default route, as I have discovered today). Because, during today's test, I was confronted with the same problem you have to deal with, I took the opportunity to investigate a possible fix in more depth.

I couldn't find why TorBox sometimes doesn't get the default route, but it also happens on other Linux systems. Research on the internet brought up several different explanations and solutions, which are also different on various distributions. Usually, that's a sign that affected people also struggle to pinpoint the source of the problem. I guess the problem has something to do with dhcp. Fortunately, TorBox has already implemented the solution to that problem in the menu script. I took this solution and put it into rc.local:

if ip link | grep eth0 ; then
  if grep "INTERNET_IFACE=eth0" /home/torbox/torbox/run/torbox.run ; then
    if ! sudo timeout 5 sudo route | grep -m 1 default; then
      sudo ifdown eth0 2>/dev/null
      ip addr flush dev eth0
      sudo ifup eth0 2>/dev/null
    fi
  fi
fi

See also here.

[FranklinClinton]

Well that sounds great! Can’t wait to try the new image once it has been released

[radio24]

The new image is online: https://www.torbox.ch/data/torbox-20230709-v053.gz

[radio24]

Thank you for your feedback and support!