Tor Directory Labyrinth: How to Check Live Onion Services Beyond HTTP Ports?
The core technical challenge is determining the active operational status of an Onion Service when the service does not run over standard HTTP ports. The user's goal centers on querying the Tor directory for hidden service descriptors without being limited to common ports like 80 or 443.
Commenters establish that no simple, readily available method exists to confirm the live status of non-HTTP Onion Services solely by querying the Tor directory. The focus remains on the discrepancy between published hidden service descriptors (HSDirs) and actual, active connectivity for protocols like XMPP. The primary query revolves around making the Tor directory yield activity confirmation for arbitrary ports.
The community consensus points to a hard technical limitation: without testing a specific connection port, verifying live activity is nearly impossible. The fault line is the gap between knowing a service *exists* via its descriptor and proving it is *currently communicating* on a non-standard port.
Key Points
#1The objective is checking non-HTTP Onion Service liveness.
maltfield wants to test services beyond HTTP, specifically citing protocols like XMPP, without being limited to common ports.
#2The necessity of querying published descriptors.
maltfield correctly notes that Onion Services publish hidden service descriptors (HSDirs) that are the focus of the inquiry.
#3The desired functional limitation.
The user explicitly rejects solutions restricted only to checking common HTTP ports.
#4The unresolved technical hurdle.
The central, unfulfilled query is whether a Tor directory query can determine current activity status.
Source Discussions (4)
This report was synthesized from the following Lemmy discussions, ranked by community score.