Running standalone Tor-Snowflake instance on PineBook Pro

06 Mar 2022 - Annabel

I’ve been running browser-based Snowflake instances for a week or so now and notice that I get the most activity (aka my instance is actually useful) at times I’m not reliably on my laptop. So, I set up a standalone instance on my currently minimally-used PineBook Pro. I wanted to leave it running during the day and didn’t need the battery drain of a GUI (my PBP has a terrible battery life [to be fixed at some indiscriminate future date]), so I went to follow these steps, with the goal of running it off a small solar generator & panel I have set up.

Chaos ensued. I would use my PBP so much more regularly if ARM64 was…a few years more developed (sigh). Anyway, after much trial and error, here’s what worked on my Armbian (Ubuntu-based)-running (‘focal’ version) PBP:

• Get Docker (different directions than regular Docker download)

  $ curl -fsSL test.docker.com -o get-docker.sh && sh get-docker.sh
  

• Go ahead and add Docker to usergroup if that’s your thing. Reminder to logout after doing so.

  $ sudo usermod -aG docker [your-username]
  

• Test Docker

  $ docker run hello-world
  

• Get Docker-Compose

  $ curl -L "https://github.com/docker/compose/releases/download/v2.2.2/docker-compose-$(uname -s)-$(uname -m)" -o /usr/local/bin/docker-compose 
  

• Get the Snowflake Docker yml file and save.

• Run your instance

  $ docker-compose up -d && docker ps
  

If you’re still feeling edgy about what supporting Tor means (anti-censorship is good, socially-illict [as harmful unto other people] is probably bad), here’s a good read (scroll down to the last part). Mainly: who will be most affected if Tor (+ Snowflake, as an anti-censorship tool) ceases to function?